About the working group

This group invites a wide range of scholarly, activist, artistic, and civic approaches to our present ecological crises. Bringing together CUNY–NYC environmental justice-centered thinkers, makers, and organizers, the Environmental Studies Working Group is an expansion of an earlier working group, Ecocriticism (organized by Kaitlin Mondello, Rebecca Fullan, and Christina Katopodis), which brought people together to think through ecocritical perspectives on literature. Since then, we have grown exponentially, especially in our intersectionality with other types of theory, including ecofeminism, Marxism, Black studies, and postcolonial studies. Our meetings aim to advance transdisciplinary, collaborative, and critical strategies that support progressive climate action and related ecological efforts. The arts and humanities are often understood to be interpretive while the natural and social sciences are often perceived to be interventionist. For the humanities to become truly environmental, it might take a total restructuring of the disciplines. Moving from inside to outside, separate to connected, intellection to action, this group tends to the urgency of environmental scholarship today by imagining and implementing wild, new transdisciplinary structures. What's more, we're interested in foregrounding how our scholarship and pedagogy is part of climate action rather than distinct from or some lesser form of it. Alongside community action, we can highlight our unique strengths as researchers and thinkers in a graduate institution.

Practitioners from all departments as well as those working in activist, civic, and cultural sectors are all welcome to join. All perspectives are needed if we are to form a full picture of environmental presents and futures.

Join us March 3rd, 2023 in the Center for the Humanities office (Room 5103) at the CUNY Graduate Center for our initial Environmental Studies Working Group meeting of the semester; click here to learn more and join us! CLICK HERE TO REGISTER AND ATTEND THIS MEETING.

Read Eric Dean Wilson's recent post as writer-in-residence for Distributaries, the Center for the Humanities's blog, "Submerging Within the Environmental Humanities," which explores many of the themes and challenges relevant to this group.