The Arts And Humanities On Environmental And Climate Change

"The Arts and Humanities on Environment and Climate Change examines how cultural institutions and their collections can support a goal shared with the scientific community: creating a climate-literate public that engages with environmental issues and climate change in an informed way. When researchers, curators, and educators use the arts and humanities to frame discussions about environmental and climate change, they can engage a far wider public in learning, conversation, and action than science can alone. Demonstrating that archival and object-based resources can act as vital evidence for change, Sutton shows how the historical record, paired with contemporary reality, can create more personal connections to what many consider a remote experience: the changing climate. Providing valuable examples of museum collections used in discussions of environmental and climate change, the book shares how historic images and landscape painting demonstrate change over time; and how documentary evidence in the form archaeological reports, ships logs, Henry David Thoreau's journals, and local reports of pond hockey conditions are being used to render climate data more accessible. Images, personal records, and professional documents have critical roles as boundary objects and proxy data. These climate resources, Sutton argues, are valuable because they make climate change personal, and attract a public less interested in a scientific approach. This approach is underused by museums and their research allies for public engagement and for building institutional relevancy. The Arts and Humanities on Environment and Climate Change will be most interesting to readers looking for ways to broaden engagement with environmental and climate issues. The ideas shared here should also act as inspiration for a broad spectrum of practitioners, particularly those writing, designing, and curating public engagement materials in museums, for wider research, and for the media"--

In an era of climate change, deforestation, melting ice caps, poisoned environments, and species loss, many people are turning to the power of the arts and humanities for sustainable solutions to global ecological problems. Introduction to the Environmental Humanities offers a practical and accessible guide to this dynamic and interdisciplinary field. This book provides an overview of the Environmental Humanities’ evolution from the activist movements of the early and mid-twentieth century to more recent debates over climate change, sustainability, energy policy, and habitat degradation in the Anthropocene era. The text introduces readers to seminal writings, artworks, campaigns, and movements while demystifying important terms such as the Anthropocene, environmental justice, nature, ecosystem, ecology, posthuman, and non-human. Emerging theoretical areas such as critical animal and plant studies, gender and queer studies, Indigenous studies, and energy studies are also presented. Organized by discipline, the book explores the role that the arts and humanities play in the future of the planet. Including case studies, discussion questions, annotated bibliographies, and links to online resources, this book offers a comprehensive and engaging overview of the Environmental Humanities for introductory readers. For more advanced readers, it serves as a foundation for future study, projects, or professional development.

Curating the Future: Museums, Communities and Climate Change explores the way museums tackle the broad global issue of climate change. It explores the power of real objects and collections to stir hearts and minds, to engage communities affected by change. Museums work through exhibitions, events, and specific collection projects to reach different communities in different ways. The book emphasises the moral responsibilities of museums to address climate change, not just by communicating science but also by enabling people already affected by changes to find their own ways of living with global warming. There are museums of natural history, of art and of social history. The focus of this book is the museum communities, like those in the Pacific, who have to find new ways to express their culture in a new place. The book considers how collections in museums might help future generations stay in touch with their culture, even where they have left their place. It asks what should the people of the present be collecting for museums in a climate-changed future? The book is rich with practical museum experience and detailed projects, as well as critical and philosophical analyses about where a museum can intervene to speak to this great conundrum of our times. Curating the Future is essential reading for all those working in museums and grappling with how to talk about climate change. It also has academic applications in courses of museology and museum studies, cultural studies, heritage studies, digital humanities, design, anthropology, and environmental humanities.

The Arts and Humanities on Environmental and Climate Change examines how cultural institutions and their collections can support a goal shared with the scientific community: creating a climate-literate public that engages with environmental issues and climate change in an informed way. When researchers, curators, and educators use the arts and humanities to frame discussions about environmental and climate change, they can engage a far wider public in learning, conversation, and action than science can alone. Demonstrating that archival and object-based resources can act as vital evidence for change, Sutton shows how the historical record, paired with contemporary reality, can create more personal connections to what many consider a remote experience: the changing climate. Providing valuable examples of museum collections used in discussions of environmental and climate change, the book shares how historic images and landscape paintings demonstrate change over time; and how documentary evidence in the form of archaeological reports, ships logs, Henry David Thoreau’s journals, and local reports of pond hockey conditions are being used to render climate data more accessible. Images, personal records, and professional documents have critical roles as boundary objects and proxy data. These climate resources, Sutton argues, are valuable because they make climate change personal and attract a public less interested in a scientific approach. This approach is underused by museums and their research allies for public engagement and for building institutional relevancy. The Arts and Humanities on Environmental and Climate Change will be most interesting to readers looking for ways to broaden engagement with environmental and climate issues. The ideas shared here should also act as inspiration for a broad spectrum of practitioners, particularly those writing, designing, and curating public engagement materials in museums, for wider research, and for the media.

A wide-ranging and original introduction to the Anthropocene (the Age of Humanity) that offers fresh, theoretical insights bridging the sciences and the humanities From noted environmental historian Carolyn Merchant, this book focuses on the original concept of the Anthropocene first proposed by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in their foundational 2000 paper. It undertakes a broad investigation into the ways in which science, technology, and the humanities can create a new and compelling awareness of human impacts on the environment. Using history, art, literature, religion, philosophy, ethics, and justice as the focal points, Merchant traces key figures and developments in the humanities throughout the Anthropocene era and explores how these disciplines might influence sustainability in the next century. Wide-ranging and accessible, this book from an eminent scholar in environmental history and philosophy argues for replacing the Age of the Anthropocene with a new Age of Sustainability.

How do artists and writers engage with environmental knowledge in the face of overwhelming information about catastrophe? What kinds of knowledge do the arts produce when addressing climate change, extinction, and other environmental emergencies? What happens to scientific data when it becomes art? In Infowhelm, Heather Houser explores the ways contemporary art manages environmental knowledge in an age of climate crisis and information overload. Houser argues that the infowhelm—a state of abundant yet contested scientific information—is an unexpectedly resonant resource for environmental artists seeking to go beyond communicating stories about crises. Infowhelm analyzes how artists transform the techniques of the sciences into aesthetic material, repurposing data on everything from butterfly migration to oil spills and experimenting with data collection, classification, and remote sensing. Houser traces how artists ranging from novelist Barbara Kingsolver to digital memorialist Maya Lin rework knowledge traditions native to the sciences, entangling data with embodiment, quantification with speculation, precision with ambiguity, and observation with feeling. Their works provide new ways of understanding environmental change while also questioning traditional distinctions between types of knowledge. Bridging the environmental humanities, digital media studies, and science and technology studies, this timely book reveals the importance of artistic medium and form to understanding environmental issues and challenges our assumptions about how people arrive at and respond to environmental knowledge.

Climate change is an enormous and increasingly urgent issue. This important book highlights how humanities disciplines can mobilize the creative and critical power of students, teachers, and communities to confront climate change. The book is divided into four clear sections to help readers integrate climate change into the classes and topics they are already teaching as well as engage with interdisciplinary methods and techniques. Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities constitutes a map and toolkit for anyone who wishes to draw upon the strengths of literary and cultural studies to teach valuable lessons that engage with climate change.

Global awareness of climate change is increasing, and the scientific evidence is incontrovertible: an environmental crisis is upon us. Art and Climate Change presents an overview of ecologically conscious contemporary art that addresses the climate emergency, as artists across the world call for an active, collective engagement with the planet, and illuminate some of the structures that threaten humanitys survival. Across five chapters, curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes examine artworks that respond to the Anthropocene and its detrimental impact on our world, from scenes of nature decimated by ongoing extinction events and landscapes turned to waste by extraction, to art from marginalized communities most affected by the injustice of climate change. What guides the artists gathered together here is an ardent concern for the living, breathing subject of the Earth and all fellow terrestrials caught up in this fast-moving climate drama.