“Environmental Humanities: Entering a New Time”

Jørgensen, Dolly, and Franklin Ginn | from Multimedia Library Collection:
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Jørgensen, Dolly, and Franklin Ginn. “Environmental Humanities: Entering a New Time.” Environmental Humanities 12, no. 2 (2020): 498–500. doi:10.1215/22011919-8623252

The environmental humanities remain, as Rose et al. stated in the first pages of this journal, a field that “engages with fundamental questions of meaning, value, responsibility, and purpose in a time of rapid, and escalating, change.” But the world is in a different ecopolitical moment than it was in 2012. The world is burning. From the wildfires that ravaged Australia to the ongoing unraveling of multiple species’ entangled lifeways;5 from the global school strikes for climate to the systematic murder of environmental activists in parts of the Global South; from the steady tick of CO2 ppm measurements to grinding urban poverty; from the upswing of reactionary nationalism in the USA, India, Brazil, Philippines, Europe, Pakistan, and elsewhere to the often unsung labor and care of ecoactivists across the world; from obesity epidemics to superweeds—the signals seem to multiply… . Environmental Humanities has an important future in this milieu, and, as journal editors, we will try to ensure that the journal continues to expand its scope accordingly. (From the article)

In this short piece, the new editors in chief of Environmental Humanities reflect on the state of the field as well as of the journal.

2020 The authors and Environmental Humanities

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