Chrulew, Matthew, Stuart Cooke, Matthew Kearnes, Emily O’Gorman, Deborah Rose, and Thom van Dooren. “Thinking Through the Environment, Unsettling the Humanities.” Introduction to Environmental Humanities, vol.1 (November 2012): 1–5.
The humanities have traditionally worked with questions of meaning, value, ethics, justice and the politics of knowledge production. In bringing these questions into environmental domains, we are able to articulate a ‘thicker’ notion of humanity, one that rejects reductionist accounts of self-contained, rational, decision making subjects. Rather, the environmental humanities positions us as participants in lively ecologies of meaning and value, entangled within rich patterns of cultural and historical diversity that shape who we are and the ways in which we are able to ‘become with’ others.
In this essay, Deborah Rose, Thom van Dooren, Matthew Chrulew, Stuart Cooke, Matthew Kearnes, and Emily O’Gorman refer to the development of the field of environmental humanities and their challenges, and explain the interdisciplinary approach and the aims of the international, open-access journal Environmental Humanities.
© Environmental Humanities 2012. Environmental Humanities is available online only and is published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).