Understanding of and Vision for the Environmental Humanities

Abstract

A defining quality of the ecological or environmental humanities (EH) movement is its persistent resistance to being nailed down. To be sure, this resilience is by design. As Deborah Bird Rose and colleagues point out in their 2012 introduction to the journal Environmental Humanities, the program has three main facets, and all operate to challenge or counter the late modern status quo.1 The three facets are:‘Thinking through’ (or ‘reading off’2) the environment;‘Unsettling’ dominant narratives through critique and other forms of resistance; and‘Bridge-building’ between disparate narratives (i.e., community-building).