Reading Group
OSEH supports an online reading group called un-earthed that meets every month to discuss topics and perspectives in the field – from ecocriticism to environmental history, animal studies, green media studies, environmental ethics and more. Readings may include articles, short stories, documentaries, exhibitions, video games etc. In the past a record of the sessions has been kept here. Currently, dates, links, and readings for upcoming sessions, as well as summarizing responses to each session can be found at www.un-earthed.group. The reading group aims to be a platform for exploration, collaboration, and recreation. All are welcome. Want to join? Sign up for the mailing list here, or contact the group's organizer, Laura op de Beke, with questions and suggestions.
Upcoming
So much of solarpunk discourse is fixated on architecture, planning, and construction. How can we think of these practices through utopian fiction?
Previous
How do we use fiction to reclaim a better more sustainable future? These four short stories show us how.
How can we think of solarity through the lens of elemental media?
How can notions of queerness help us better understand the environment and what we stand to lose in the climate crisis?
How can we feminist new materialist theory help us understand our entanglement with nature, climate and its changes?
How are traditional, and toxic masculinities tangled up with extractive, ecologically destructive practices? And are there different masculinities we can cultivate that are more sustainable?
How can we reconceptualize air as a site of waste?
How do we survive in a world of waste and ruins?
Exploring waste through David Farrier's writings on plastics as future fossils.
What's so funny about climate change?
"The past is like a foreign country" L.P. Hartley wrote, but the deep past is like an alien world. How can we relate to deep time? And what does walking have to do with it?
Why is it that the fate of individual trees often elicits strong emotional responses from people? And what role does personal, cultural or national identity play in this dynamic?
How does information - data - feature in art and media on climate change? We are reading Heather Houser's Infowhelm to find out.
Ecotopia is a 1975 cult novel by Ernest Callenbach. Does it still hold revolutionary potential today?
This month we are reading excerpts from Martin Lee Mueller's Being Salmon Being Human, and asking ourselves how to make anthropomorphising narrativization work as a knowledge practice.
What are the ethical and political issues at work in the study of meat and dairy production? How can we be ethical witnesses to industrial-scale animal suffering?
This session we are exploring Marx's concept of metabolic rift, as well as the division of labour and how it plays into the work we do as environmental humanities scholars.
Join our February meeting on the topic of the Blue Humanities, or the study of the history and cultural imaginary of the ocean.
What values are espoused in the philosophy of New Agrarianism, and how does the concrete practice of permaculture fit into the picture?
What can we learn from octopuses?
How do we make sense of our environment through our ears? What are soundscapes and how can we study them?
