Environmental Studies Commons^™

Science And Food Fictions: Agricultural Technologies, The Evolution Of The Modern Industrial Diet, And Calls For A Food Revolution, Tracey Daniels-Lerberg

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] Individual food choices are culturally and historically contingent practices that arise through an amalgamation of often hidden political, scientific, and economic policies that shape desire and influence access. Food, like all other man-made mechanisms of control and authority, has been used “as a political tool for […] subjugating (either economically or politically) other nations” according to William A. Dando, a professor at the University of North Dakota, who in 1975 urged American agricultural officials not to use food as “a weapon” against starving nations, something he feared was eminently possible given the economic and political climate of agricultural …

Solving Our Bread Problem: Gnostic Trends In Environmentalist Thought And Janisse Ray As Solution, Jeremy Elliott

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] One would be hard pressed to find a book more significant to the modern American environmentalist movement than John Muir’s seminal My First Summer in the Sierra. It gathered support for Muir’s fledgling Sierra Club and raised Muir’s national profile as he influenced Teddy Roosevelt on the creation of the National Park Service, thus serving a key role in perhaps the two most influential environmental organizations in the 20th century. Muir’s work is interesting, though, for another reason, as well: the way that Muir deals with the reality of his own physical body. Muir’s body is almost completely …

Vagabond: The Trans-Species Ecologies Of Plant/Human Encounters, Hubert Alain

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] The opening scene of the acclaimed documentary King Corn (2007) shows Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis, main protagonists, learning that corn constitutes one of the main carbon molecules of their hair. Segue to introduce the crop’s omnipresence in North American processed foods, principally used as sweetener, starch and animal feeds, the almost banal scientific fact presented in this scene is mesmerizing, providing a somewhat embodied support to the popular environmentalist saying “you are what you eat,” or to Donna Haraway’s poetic understanding of bodies and species as “full of their own others, full of messmates, of companions” (Haraway …

Language And Power In Social Movements: Hearing All The Voices In Food System Advocacy Narratives, Dianna Winslow

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[From first paragraph] Everyone must eat. It is this immediate and personal connection to food which drives public and scholarly interest in the complex narratives emerging in what is becoming known as the “food movement”—activism on a global scale that is challenging how the industrialized production, distribution and consumption of food is affecting environmental conditions, food sovereignty and security, human health and wellness, and cultural identities. As the number of food advocacy groups promoting different, yet overlapping, public concerns continues to increase, so does the flow of language used by these groups to shape collective identities and political stances, which …

Contemporary Art Exhibitions As Places Of Learning About Reflexive Food System Localization, Andrew Bieler

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[From first paragraph] This paper describes the role of socially engaged art practices in opening up our pedagogical imaginations to foster reflexive and creative approaches to building the local food movement. These contemporary artistic engagements with local food or ‘food system localization’ are in the genre of what has been called social practice artwork or, in other words, art practices that focus less on the production of a singular aesthetic object and more on the relational and experiential aspects of participatory interaction in a creative process (e.g., Kester; Finkerpearl). In this context, I examine social practice artworks that create experimental …

Call For Papers, Peter Schulman, Josh A. Weinstein

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Call for Papers for volume 2 of Green Humanities (2017).

Editor's Note, Peter Schulman, Josh A. Weinstein

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Editors' note to volume 2 of Green Humanities (2017).

Cover: Green Humanities, Vol. 2, 2017

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Cover image, including masthead and editorial board, for volume 2 of Green Humanities (2017).

Call For Papers, Peter Schulman, Josh A. Weinstein

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Call for Papers for the inaugural issue, volume 1 of Green Humanities (2015).

The Creative Arts, Environmental Crises & Well-Being In Globalized Place: Methodological Considerations For An Ecocritical Mode Of Practice-Based Research, Brad Warren, Patrick West

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[From Introduction] Problems pertaining to environmental and ecological well-being are increasingly having effects on a global scale; climate change is the most obvious example of this, but not the only one (the pollution of the oceans and transnational light pollution are others). Our paper argues that individual and community well-being in general, which is always directly or indirectly related to specifically environmental or ecological well-being at the global scale, can be augmented through the introduction of Creative Arts activities and products into local communities.

Eco-Digital Pedagogies: Why And How Teaching The Green Humanities Can Shape Change, Laura Barbasrhoden

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] In Now You See It, interdisciplinary scholar and education leader Cathy Davidson points out a stunningly obvious truth about human perception: “Whatever you see means there is something you do not see” (290). Practitioners of the environmental humanities have long taken on tasks of seeing and saying what is not seen, what is not heard, from the vantage point of dominant ideologies, from consumerist economic models to the instrumentalist, anthropocentric rationalities that undergird them. Meantime, over the last few decades, we green humanities scholars have broadened our range of vision: studied more diverse texts, deepened analyses, and …

Recognizing The Dualism To Overcome It: The Hybridization Of Reality, Fabio Valenti Possamai

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] Bruno Latour’s project attempts to overcome the dualism between nature and culture that still persists in our world. My focus will reside on three of Latour’s books, namely, We Have Never Been Modern, Reassembling the Social, and An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. Since the way we live our lives greatly influences the way we think and, consequently, our philosophical positions, it is important to say something about Bruno Latour’s biography. His life was extremely inter and transdisciplinary, a strong reason for his work to be so non-orthodox (Blok and Jensen 8).

Is Trash Hybrid?, Todd Levasseur

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[From first paragraph] The scholarship focusing on globalization over the last thirty years has achieved impressive gains in nuance and understanding. Some of the more prominent approaches to study globalization that have developed in this period include network, feminist, gender, economic, political, media, religious, diaspora, and migratory lenses. All of these lenses are adroitly utilized by scholars to help us better understand globalization and their use helps to shape the field of global studies. This article argues that environmental humanities scholars must build upon insights from these disciplines, while bringing scholarly tools from the environmental sciences into their research projects, …

Of Portages And Pedagogy, Glenn Freeman

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Under title: In Memory of Bob Black.

The Process Of Disaster: Environmental Justice Discourse And Spike Lee’S When The Levees Broke, Ali Brox

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First Paragraph] One of the first images viewers see in Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) is high water lapping near the top of a street sign. The street name is Humanity, and flood waters dangerously threaten to overtake the green rectangular sign. Lee’s image succinctly portrays the theme for the next four hours of the documentary: the threat of losing a sense of humanity as a result of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. The Humanity Street sign becomes more nuanced when considered from an environmental justice perspective: the rising waters …

Notes On Contributors, Peter Schulman, Josh A. Weinstein

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Notes on Contributors to volume 3, Green Humanities (2021).

A “Kind Of Impiety”: Deforestation, Sustainability, And Self In The Works Of Samuel Richardson And Yuan Mei, Samara Cahill

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[From first paragraph] In line with scholarship by Timothy Clark, Erin Drew and John Sitter, David Fairer, and Tom Keymer, I argue that it is a distortion of eighteenth-century literature to identify the Romantic period as the origin of modern ecological consciousness. Indeed, according to Drew and Sitter, the dismissive characterization of the eighteenth century in current ecocritical scholarship is “puzzling” because much of the literature of that period “not only deals with the natural world but does so in ways arguably more ecocentric and less egocentric in orientation than much Romantic writing” (227).

Editors' Note, Peter Schulman, Josh Weinstein

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Editors' note to the inaugural issue, volume 1 of Green Humanities (2015).

Cover: Green Humanities, Vol. 1, 2015

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Cover image for inaugural issue, volume 1 of Green Humanities (2015).

Odu Researchers Attempt To Forecast Flood Impacts In Real Dollars, News @ Odu

News Items

No abstract provided.

A Raft To Coastal Resilience: Odu Researchers Collaborate To Help Rural Communities Combat Flooding Impacts, News @ Odu

News Items

No abstract provided.

Future Location For Odu's Institute For Coastal Adaptation And Resilience Will Foster Research And Experiential Learning, Jonah Grinkewitz

News Items

No abstract provided.

Odu Researchers Will Put Buoys In The Mediterranean Sea To Help Schools Teach Climate Change, Mindy Ayala-Diaz

News Items

No abstract provided.

A Global Ecological Classification Of Coastal Segment Units To Complement Marine Biodiversity Observation Network Assessments, Roger Sayre, Kevin Butler, Keith Van Graafeiland, Sean Breyer, Dawn Wright, Charlie Frye, Deniz Karagulle, Madeline Martin, Jill Cress, Tom Allen, Rebecca J. Allee, Rost Parsons, Bjorn Nyberg, Mark J. Costello, Peter Harris, Frank E. Muller-Karger

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

A new data layer provides Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) labels for global coastal segments at 1 km or shorter resolution. These characteristics are summarized for six US Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) sites and one MBON Pole to Pole of the Americas site in Argentina. The global coastlines CMECS classifications were produced from a partitioning of a 30 m Landsat-derived shoreline vector that was segmented into 4 million 1 km or shorter segments. Each segment was attributed with values from 10 variables that represent the ecological settings in which the coastline occurs, including properties of the adjacent …

Odu Researchers Work With Pamunkey Tribe To Address Sea Level Rise On Its Lands, Amy Matzke-Fawcett

News Items

No abstract provided.

Biophilia In Everyday Life, Olivia Duke

Virginias Collegiate Honors Council Conference

Mindfulness is an important practice in daily life that many have forgotten in our fast-paced consumerist society. When we are advised to be mindful, we tend in think that we don’t have the time or money for it – but really it involves simple and inexpensive choices. I found my own inspiration through Biophilia, a movement encouraging the reintegration of nature into daily life. Simply taking a moment to be grounded in your surroundings can drastically boost your mood. Biophilia encourages healthy living of both body and mind. Taking care of ourselves as well as our natural environment is vital …

City Of Norfolk Underground Storage Tank Analysis, Jake Hall

Student Posters: GIS Day

According to The Norfolk Environmental Commission, the City of Norfolk may contain thousands of abandoned Underground Storage Tanks (USTs), most often used for storing petroleum at filling stations or for fuel oils (such as kerosene) for homes and businesses, which represent a hazard to the City of Norfolk and its surrounding environment (Norfolk Environmental Commission , 2018)....

The focus of this project is to create a database of USTs, maps to more easily track tank locations, provide analysis of areas where leaks are more likely to occur and the possible environmental concerns surrounding those areas, and create a web map …

Category 4 Storm Surge City Of Norfolk, James Mclees

Student Posters: GIS Day

Map displays the type and number of structures impacted by flood water from a Category 4 hurricane.

Fostering University Collaboration And Building Capacity To Respond To Coastal Resilience Challenges In Virginia: Findings From The Rotating Resilience Roundtables Workshop Spring 2019, Wie Yusuf, Michelle Covi, Anamaria Bukvic, Tom Allen, Taiwo Oguntuyo

Presentations, Lectures, Posters, Reports

[from Background and Overview]

Communities in coastal Virginia, particularly in the urban region of Hampton Roads and the rural Eastern Shore peninsula, are experiencing the impacts of climate change as part of everyday life. Among the most apparent impacts are sea level rise and associated flooding, but increasingly residents of the region are observing changing ecosystems, health impacts and complex social challenges are made more difficult. The region is experiencing the fastest rate of relative sea level rise on the U.S. east coast due to interactions between ocean currents, global sea level rise, high-water tables and ground subsidence (Adapt Virginia …

Determinants Of Organic Cotton Apparel Purchase: A Comparison Of Young Consumers In The Usa And South Korea, Tae-Im Han

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The purpose of this research was to examine consumers from distinct cultural groups and identify similarities and differences in their green purchase behaviors. The sample consisted of consumers from the U.S.A. and South Korea and the theory of planned behavior was used as a theoretical framework to test the influence of diverse constructs on consumers' purchase intentions toward organic cotton apparel. For both countries, perceived behavioral control (PBC) and descriptive norms were strong predictors of purchase intentions and injunctive norms strongly influenced attitude formation. However, the study also found different results between the two groups. For example, while attitude was …