Join us on June 27th for the last session of the environmental humanities reading group before the summer on Petrocultures. In this session we will familiarize ourselves with concepts like ‘petroculture,’ ‘petromelancholia,’ and ‘the energy unconscious.’ Dr Jeff Diamanti (UvA) will lead the session.
Finn Arne and Dolly Jørgensen from the University of Stavanger will visit the VU on the 17th of May. The theme of their lectures is technology in human-animal relations, specifically concerning bird houses and dogs with antennas. Save the date!
One of the initiatives pitched at our Birthday Event last year is a new Environmental Humanities Reading Group. Their next meeting, focused on ecoambiguity, is on 21 February on the VU Campus.
Art historian T.J. Demos was at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam to present his most recent book publication Against the Anthropocene (2017) on December 12th 2017. We had the opportunity to interview him on behalf of the Environmental Humanities Center. Just before he started his book presentation we met and we had a chance to ask him some questions about his view on the environmental humanities and the importance of our Environmental Humanities Center.
Microplastics are everywhere. Particles of plastic less than five millimeters in length (about the size of a sesame seed) find their way into the environment from many sources. These plastics are essentially indestructible; they do not biodegrade but break down into ever smaller pieces. At this interdisciplinary event, we explore microplastics from multiple angles.
Amsterdam University Press has started a book series devoted to Environmental Humanities in Pre-modern Cultures. The first book in the series is just out: Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes: Ecotheory and the Environmental Imagination by Heide Estes. "Literary scholars have traditionally understood landscapes, whether natural or manmade, as metaphors for humanity instead of concrete settings for people's actions.... Continue Reading →
Friday 23 June 15.30-17.00hrs - drinks after (please register below) Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Main Building Room 15A-33 Our final event of this academic year focuses on non-human animals. Animal Studies is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field that explores relations between humans and other animals now and in the past. Our speakers from the fields of... Continue Reading →
Agents in the Anthropocene: Trans/disciplinary Practices in Art and Design Education Today symposium—call for presentations Piet Zwart Institute Master Education in ArtJanuary 26–28, 2017 Proposal deadline: December 16, 2016 The Master of Education in Arts, Piet Zwart Institute is pleased to announce an open call for presentations for the two-day symposium Agents in the Anthropocene:... Continue Reading →
Libby Robin's inspiring keynote at the launch of the Environmental Humanities Center on 4 November is now available online on our YouTube Channel. Libby Robin is Professor in the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, and affiliated professor at Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, in the KTH Environmental Humanities Lab and... Continue Reading →
Environmental Humanities and New Materialisms The Ethics of Decolonizing Nature and Culture 8th Annual Conference on the New Materialisms 7-9 June 2017, Paris Environmental Humanities and New Materialisms share an ethic of decolonizing nature and culture, as they depart from anthropocentric and constructivist positions. Our call is to consider ourselves as permeable, part of the... Continue Reading →
Amsterdam University Press is launching a new book series on environmental humanities and pre-modern cultures. This series in environmental humanities offers approaches to medieval, early modern, and global pre-industrial cultures from interdisciplinary environmental perspectives. They invite submissions (both monographs and edited collections) in the fields of ecocriticism, specifically ecofeminism and new ecocritical analyses of under-represented... Continue Reading →
Since one of the effects of climate change in our current era is an increase in flooding, Professor Petra van Dam has analyzed how the Dutch dealt with floods in the past. She reached the surprising conclusion that even though risk of flooding is on the increase today, our society is now less adapted to... Continue Reading →
We warmly (no pun intended) recommend a visit to the blog Historical Climatology, which focuses on climate change scholarship in disciplines other than the sciences, including history, economics, political science, and law. The blog was founded by Dr. Dagomar Degroot, now a professor of environmental history at Georgetown University. In 2010, he was a fellow... Continue Reading →
Friday 4 November 2016, 15.30-17hrs Faculty of Humanities, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam At the launch of the Environmental Humanities Center at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, you are very welcome to attend Libby Robin's lecture on Environmental Humanities in Practice. The Environmental Humanities (EH) is a focus for collaborative projects between the humanities disciplines emerging in different forms... Continue Reading →
