Matching Items (44)
Description
The purpose of this project was to garner a greater understanding of the form, function, and uses of school as well as community gardens. Worldwide, school and community gardens are used to promote health, nutrition, and some aspects of education. I wished to extend my knowledge of these gardens to greater lengths by building and incorporating a school garden in a community that was underderserving. Along the way I also sought to better my understanding of how to help communities through the knowledge and aid of experts and other community members. By doing this, I would hopefully both improve that community as well as understand the difficulties and problems that stand in the way of greater school garden incorporation.
ContributorsMitrius, Jake (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis director) / Aggarwal, Rhimjim (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
This thesis examines perceptions of climate change in literature through the lens of the environmental humanities, an interdisciplinary field that brings history, ecocriticism, and anthropology together to consider the environmental past, present and future. The project began in Iceland, during the Svartárkot Culture-Nature Program called “Human Ecology and Culture at Lake Mývatn 1700-2000: Dimensions of Environmental and Cultural Change”. Over the course of 10 days, director of the program, Viðar Hreinsson, an acclaimed literary and Icelandic Saga scholar, brought in researchers from different fields of study in Iceland to give students a holistically academic approach to their own environmental research. In this thesis, texts under consideration include the Icelandic Sagas, My Antonia by Willa Cather, Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita, and The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. The thesis is supported by secondary works written by environmental humanists, including Andrew Ross, Steve Hartman, Ignacio Sanchez Cohen, and Joni Adamson, who specialize in archeological research on heritage sites in Iceland and/or study global weather patterns, prairie ecologies in the American Midwest, the history of water in the Southwest, and climate fiction. Chapter One, focusing on the Icelandic Sagas and My Antonia, argues that literature from different centuries, different cultures, and different parts of the world offers evidence that humans have been driving environmental degradation at the regional and planetary scales since at least the 1500s, especially as they have engaged in aggressive forms of settlement and colonization. Chapter Two, focused on Tropic of Orange, this argues that global environmental change leads to extreme weather and drought that is increasing climate migration from the Global South to the Global North. Chapter Three, focused on The Water Knife, argues that climate fiction gives readers the opportunity to think about and better prepare for a viable and sustainable future rather than wait for inevitable apocalypse. By exploring literature that depicts and represents climate change through time, environmental humanists have innovated new methods of analysis for teaching and thinking about what humans must understand about their impacts on ecosystems so that we can better prepare for the future.
ContributorsBurns, Kate S (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Human preferences, practices and actions are the main drivers of global environmental change in the 21st century. It is crucial, therefore, to promote pro-environmental behavior. In order to accomplish this, we need to move beyond rational choice and behavioral decision theories, which do not capture the full range of commitments, assumptions, imaginaries, and belief systems that drive those preferences and actions. Humanities disciplines, such as philosophy, history, religious studies, gender studies, language and literary studies, psychology, and pedagogics do offer deep insights into human motivations, values, and choices. We believe that the expertise of such fields for transforming human preferences, practices and actions is ignored at society’s peril. We propose an agenda that focuses global humanities research on stepping up to the challenges of planetary environmental change. We have established Environmental Humanities Observatories through which to observe, explore and enact the crucial ways humanistic disciplines may help us understand and engage with global ecological problems by providing insight into human action, perceptions, and motivation. We present this Manifesto as an invitation for others to join the “Humanities for the Environment” open global consortium of humanities observatories as we continue to develop a shared research agenda.
ContributorsHolm, Poul (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Author) / Huang, Hsinya (Author) / Kirdan, Lars (Author) / Kitch, Sally (Author) / McCalman, Iain (Author) / Ogude, James (Author) / Ronan, Marisa (Author) / Scott, Dominic (Author) / Thompson, Kirill Ole (Author) / Travis, Charles (Author) / Wehner, Kirsten (Author) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Institute for Humanities Research (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Women and Gender Studies (Contributor)
Created2015-12-21
Description
There are places that rest tangibly on the Earth's surface, and places that flourish only in the imagination, and places that site their existence within a moral geography, and a few places, not many, Bor Island among them, that manage to fuse all these settings together. In truth, Bor belongs with that long tradition of island Arcadias that have attracted Western thinkers since well before Thomas More in 1516 gave them the name they now have: Utopia. What makes Bor Island unique is that its informing theme is fire.
ContributorsPyne, Stephen (Author) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-11-30