The Understory: Environmental Humanities news from PPEH!


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June 28, 2024

Welcome to The Understory, PPEH's environmental humanities digest! We're growing a digital community space to feature work in EH, share information, and most importantly, to expand conversation in all areas of the environmental humanities. Please feel welcome to contribute your events, related work, and recommendations by emailing ppehlab-director@sas.upenn.edu!

Events

Join us in celebrating the remarkable capstone projects of our graduating Environmental Humanities minors. These talented students completed the "Public Environmental Humanities" course at UPenn required for minors and designed to integrate their coursework in a final public-facing project of their design, taught by PPEH Director Bethany Wiggin in Spring 2024. We invite you to explore their extraordinary, publicly engaged work!

Maddie Ahola (C’24) — "Intergenerational Farming: Karen refugees in Philadelphia"

Maddie’s project is a special magazine edition that showcases intergenerational farming practices at Novick Farm. This community-based farming and educational organization in Philadelphia works closely with Karen refugees from Myanmar. [Read Maddie's article]

“Although the traditional academic assignments gave me foundational knowledge to design and conduct this public project, working hands-on and with community members allowed me to feel more personally connected to the project."

Sofia Anderson (C’24) - “Climate Anxiety on Campus”

Sofia created a prototype of a website that addresses climate anxiety in college communities. This poster details her project process and findings. Click at left to view her poster

“My biggest success was generating the website and creating the interactive component of the blog. I love that users can like other’s responses and reply to people’s insights. It creates a great community experience that allows one to consider other perspectives.”

Faith Bochert (W’24) - “Climate Storytelling Booth”

Faith organized a pop-up storytelling booth activity that was part of the annual Earth Week festival hosted by Penn Environmental Group, GreenFest. [Read a blog post about Faith's process]

“After participants shared their climate stories, we invited them to pin their finished work to a poster board amongst others’ stories. This visual collection of hand-written stories was a poignant reminder of the many ways in which all of our lives are touched by climate change.”

Hannah Wassermann (C’24) - “Climate Fiction Book Club”

Hannah created a collection of climate fiction for middle-grade readers, complete with discussion questions and additional supporting resources. [Check out Hannah's book club]

“Climate fiction is a fantastic way to learn about pressing environmental issues and discuss our future. It is also incorporates important social issues, often highlighting environmental justice, degradation, public health, and Black and Indigenous voices to name just a few."

Emilee Gu (C’25) - “The Activist Roadmap: An Interview Series”

While Emilee is not a graduating senior just yet, she participated in the course early. Her final project will become the basis of her Paideia Senior Capstone Project. Click at right to view her poster

“I set out on a journey to speak with activists of different ages, professions, and aspirations to learn about the causes that engage their passions. I hope to take you along with me on this multi-part excursion to understand the diverse approaches to rescue, unite, or integrate with a community through activism.”

PPEH Community Updates

BRIDGES: A Humanities-Led Coalition for Sustainability

Bethany Wiggin is delighted to serve as one of the twenty-member Governing Council of BRIDGES. BRIDGES is a humanities-driven transdisciplinary sustainability science coalition focused on solving the social problems highlighted by the UN Sustainable Development Goals and, after a multi-year preparatory process, has been chartered by UNESCO's Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Program. The Council's first meeting was held on June 19 at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris. Among its goals is the promotion of models for community-based learning, including PPEH’s project Futures Beyond Refining. A catalgoue of BRIDGES projects is available through the BRIDGES hub at Trinity St Davids (Wales).

Final IEC Working Group Conference!

The final conference of the IEC Working Group will be held online with three live sessions on July 23-25. During these sessions, the teams will explore the policy-relevant outcomes of their work with invited experts and participate in a policy-writing sprint, workshop articles for a planned special journal issue, and review the film series about IEC that PPEH has made, documenting the community-driven work of 8 of the group's 10 teams. We are thrilled that we will soon be able to share these films more widely. They were produced by PPEH Program Coordinator Megan Pollin Hernandez and filmmaker Tom Quigley.

If you’d like to join any of the live sessions, please contact Bethany Wiggin for meeting links. [View the full meeting agenda]

My Climate Story: A Year of Growth and Impact

In 2024, My Climate Story (MCS) expanded its efforts across North America through the Campus Correspondents program, marking an exciting year of growth!

Our team took some time to reflect on and compile the project's achievements and milestones over the past year. Be sure to check out "MCS by the Numbers" and watch a moving collage of "Why We Collect Climate Stories."

We’re excited to continue this project, collaborating with passionate educators, students, activists, and storytellers to build climate literacy in classrooms and communities from a wide range of locales and perspectives! [Read the MCS year-end reflection]

Thank You To Our 2024 Ecotopian Toolmakers + Partners!

We’d like to extend a huge thank you to our 2024 Ecotopian Toolmakers, Austen Camille, Blue Lab, e+i Studio, Richard Hamilton, and Bobby Haskell, along with our partner, the Morris Arboretum & Gardens, for helping us present this year’s programming!

These artist-led workshops have left us feeling inspired and energized. All five projects brought exceptional creativity in engaging audiences with the new, unfamiliar, and sometimes even uncomfortable issues surrounding Multispecies Flourishing. These tools empowered viewers to engage with and act upon these issues with newfound confidence and care.

Keep an eye out for the forthcoming catalog, which will become part of the growing archive of Ecotopian Tools. In the meantime, you can browse these and other past projects on the Ecotopian Toolkit website.

Bethany Wiggin will be stepping away from PPEH this summer although still carrying out vital work on signature PPEH projects. In 2024-25 she holds the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and Humanities at High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University.

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Penn Program in Environmental Humanities

University of Pennsylvania

602 Williams Hall, 255 S. 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

ppehlab-director@sas.upenn.edu

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