Lunchtime Showcase of Environmental Humanities Projects

About this Showcase of Humanities Projects

Watch the video recording of this event here:

Interested in virtual reality games on environmental social justice, seed books as mutual aid, community gardens and archives, transforming an estuary into an open-air classroom, exploring climate change through a history of Freon and air conditioning?

Join the Center for the Humanities for a showcase of creative and innovative community-based projects and research developed from several different public humanities initiatives by students and scholars at CUNY.

Over two lunchtime sessions, Fellows from Humanities New York, the Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research, and recipients of the CUNY Adjunct Incubator will present their unique projects that combine digital and community engagement with artistic and academic methodologies. Join us Thu, Nov 18th at 12:30 for the first showcase focusing on environmental justice projects and research.

Click here to Register for this free online event via Zoom.

Read about each student fellow or scholar, their public humanities projects, and the initiatives they stem from in detail below:

• Bibi Calderaro (Humanities NY Fellow and a PhD student in the Urban Education program at CUNY’s Graduate Center)
  
  
  Project: C.A.R.E. Program (Collaboratory in Active Regenerative Ecologies) for Environmental Justice is a bioregion-specific and radically innovative project that invites public education teachers to a summer residency in the Hudson River Estuary that focuses on immersive pedagogies.
  
  
  
  

• Dominika Ksel (CUNY Adjunct Incubator recipient, teaches at New York City College of Technology, CUNY)
  
  
  Project: Virtual Reality and Environmental Social Justice presents "TrashTalk: A VR Exploratorium" is a student-created a multi-media project that centers on Environmental Social Justice (Urban Climate Justice and Intersectionality) in NYC, including an interactive website with a 360 VR Video and Urban Climate Justice VR game TrashTalk.
  
  
  
  
  
• Alicia Grullon (CUNY Adjunct Incubator recipient, teaches at at Queens College, CUNY and the School of Visual Arts)
  
  
  Project: Seed Books is an interdisciplinary art project focused on creating a community seed bank, based on seeds grown in working class IBPOC communities and what that might look like in non-traditional format.
  
  
  
  
  
• Eric Dean Wilson (Teaching Fellow for the Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research and doctoral student in the English Department at The Graduate Center, CUNY)
  
  
  Project: Narrating Ecological Crises will be a series of recorded conversations with writers, scholars, and artists about the challenges and strategies of telling the story of global warming to a public audience. The edited conversations on lyrical description, journalistic ethics, and translating scientific concepts can then be used both in writing classrooms and as seminars for the public. The project follows from Wilson's own attempt to communicate climate science and impact for a general audience, his book After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming and the Terrible Cost of Comfort, which explores climate change through the history and impact of Freon, air conditioning and artificial cooling on the environment.
  
  
  
  
• Pedro Cabello del Moral (Digital Fellow for the Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research and doctoral student in the Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures Department at The Graduate Center, CUNY)
  
  
  Project: Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/Knowledges/Memory brings together community organizers, members of immigrant communities, and members of the university community to 1) assist in the support and expansion of undocu-immigrant-led initiatives (cooperatives, workshops, and gardens) devised in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and 2) think collectively about how to build an archive of the commons during a crisis. The archive’s form, structure, and contents will emerge out of the collaborative process of thinking, working, creating, and sustaining life together.
  
  

About These Initiatives:

Cuny Adjunct Incubator: is a framework for supporting the significant scholarly, creative, and pedagogical work of adjuncts teaching in the humanities and humanistic social sciences across CUNY. Providing social, logistical, financial, and professional support for the creation and circulation of knowledge by CUNY adjuncts, this platform promotes the crucial work of part-time faculty across the CUNY community and senior college campuses. Sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and the Gittell Urban Studies Collective at The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research: is an interdisciplinary platform for creative, activist, and scholarly collaboration that supports humanistic research, teaching, and activities with social justice aims. Working with a cohort of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and community partners, the project opens up and democratizes knowledge production, supports civic and community engagement, and connects classrooms, CUNY campuses, and the city of New York. ​

Public Humanities Fellowship with Humanities New York: offers advanced humanities graduate students a chance to explore the public application of their scholarly interests, including training in the methods of the public humanities, networking, and professional development. Each Fellow in the cohort of 18 designs and implements a public humanities project in collaboration with a community-based partner.

Click here for more information on public humanities practices.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and the Gittell Urban Studies Collective at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and Humanities NY.

Click here to RSVP and learn more about our second showcase on Thu, Dec 9th focusing on Community Education and Public Learning Projects.