Rethinking Sustainability: Next-Generation Environmental Humanities is a new project connecting six universities (Concordia, UofT, YorkU, Trent U, U of A, UCLA, and QMLU) and community partners (Les Amis du Champ des Possibles [Montreal], Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew [London]). The project considers how “next-generation environmental humanities” (Neimanis et al. 78) can contribute to efforts to identify and mitigate the uneven impact of anthropogenic climate change and resulting inequalities associated with the proposed epoch of the Anthropocene.
Our project moves beyond the silos that have previously limited the impact of work in environmental studies to a transdisciplinary, postdisciplinary, ‘next-generation’ approach (including communication studies, literature, human geography, art history, science studies, postcolonial studies, sexuality studies) that is both public facing and poised to join the social sciences in contributing to global environmental assessments on key sustainability issues. This project represents a pivotal moment in environmental humanities where a substantive dialogue is currently underway across disciplinary boundaries meant to ‘thicken’ critical responses to the proposed epoch of the Anthropocene.
The team is led by Jill Didur (English, Concordia) and co-investigators Jesse Arseneault (English, Concordia), Nalini Mohabir (Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia), and Cynthia Quarrie (English, Concordia). Other collaborators include Michelle Murphy (CRC Tier 1 in Science and Technology Studies and Environmental Data Justice, UofT), Anne Pasek (CRC Tier 2 in Media, Culture and Environment, Trent U), Andil Gosine (Environmental Arts and Justice, YorkU), Elizabeth DeLoughrey (English, UCLA), Kathryn Yusoff (Geography, QMUL), Philip Aghoghovwia (UofA & U Free State, South Africa ), and Jean-Thomas Tremblay (Environmental Humanities, York U).
The team is currently planning a network building workshop to be held in Fall 2023.
Didur was recently interviewed by students as a part of Concordia’s Sustainability Ambassadors program. She discussed her research on sustainability, postcolonial studies, and the environmental humanities as part of the Greenwatch Interviews project:
“I worry sometimes that the idea of ‘sustainable development’ has come to signify an innocent universalism, obscuring the history of colonialism and resource extraction that has produced the environmental crisis we are currently experiencing. The way we think about sustainability needs to go beyond science, social science, and scientific approaches to include a greater understanding of the cultural contexts that have led us toward the Anthropocene.”
Jill Didur 