The Environmental Humanities and Social Transformation Colloquium aims to build an intellectual community of Princeton scholars and graduate students from all backgrounds whose work is animated by — or intersects with — issues central to the environmental humanities. Artists, scholars, writers, photographers, journalists, and activists from Princeton University and around the world are invited to lead intimate discussions related to the study and representation of how people shape — and are shaped by — their interactions with the environment.
The colloquium is organized by Rob Nixon, the Thomas A. and Currie C. Barron Family Professor in Humanities and the Environment and professor of English and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, and Anne McClintock, the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies and the High Meadows Environmental Institute.
The Environmental Humanities and Social Transformation Colloquium is held throughout the fall and spring semesters. Events are open to the public.
Current Series
Spring 2024
| Seminar Dates | Speaker(s) |
| April 2 | Robin Wall Kimmerer, Scientist and best-selling author of Braiding Sweetgrass |
Past Series
Fall 2023
| Seminar Dates | Speaker(s) |
| October 4 | Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winning author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes |
| October 25
Hurricane Riskscapes, Island Survivalism, and the Post/Colonial Dilemma in the Caribbean |
Kevon Rhiney, Visiting Barron Professor |
| November 15 Reconnection, Resistance, and Land Back |
Tara Houska, Couchiching First Nation |
Spring 2023
| Seminar Topics | Speaker(s) |
| February 14
Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters Along the Korean DMZ |
Eleana Kim, Professor of Anthropology, UC Irvine |
| March 21
Bananapocalypse! Externalities in the Making of Plantation Capitalism |
Alyssa Paredes, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan |
| April 3 | Michael Hathaway, Professor of Anthropology, Simon Fraser University |
| April 20 | Imani Jacqueline Brown, Queen Mary, University of London; Independent Artist; Research Fellow at Forensic Architecture |
Fall 2022
| Seminar Topics | Speaker(s) |
| October 4 | Cleo Wölfle Hazard, Assistant Professor in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington |
| October 25
Thieves of Patria: Subterranean Matters in Plurinational Bolivia |
Andrea Marston, Associate Professor of Geography, Rutgers University |
Spring 2022
| Seminar Topics | Speaker(s) |
| March 16 | Sebastien Philippe, Associate Research Scholar, Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs |
| April 6
Horizon Work: At the Edges of Knowledge in an Age of Runaway Climate Change (WATCH) |
Adriana Petryna, Professor and Director of the M.D.-Ph.D. Program in Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania |
| April 18
The Great Uprooting: Migration and Movement in the Age of Climate Change |
Fall 2021
| Seminar Topics | Speaker(s) |
| Sept. 22
Meditations from the Shoal (WATCH) |
Tiffany King, Associate Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality, University of Virginia |
| Oct. 6
On Black Breath (WATCH) |
Kimberly Bain, Assistant Professor of English Language and Literatures, University of British Columbia |
| Nov. 17
Another Sky: Dreams of Ecological Futures For Dismantling the Anthropocene |
Assistant Professor of Humanities, Arts and Sciences Professor Milton Santos and the Multidisciplinary Graduate Program in Culture and Society, Federal University of Bahia (Brazil) |
Spring 2020
| Seminar Topics | Speaker(s) |
| Feb. 19 | Kadir van Lohuizen, Photojournalist, NOOR |
| March 4
Sovereignty at the Margins: Precarious Lives in the Bengal Delta |
Malcolm Sen, Assistant Professor of English, University of Massachusetts-Amherst |
| April 1
CANCELED: Horizoning Work: On Wildfires and the Limits of Emergency Response |
|
| April 22
CANCELED: (En)gendering Climate Justice |
Farhana Sultana, Associate Professor of Geography and Research Director for Environmental Collaboration and Conflicts, Syracuse University |
Fall 2019
| Seminar Topics | Speaker(s) |
| Sept. 25 | Meera Subramanian, Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and the Humanities, Princeton University |
| Oct. 16
Humans as Acquired Taste: Thoughts on the History of an Idea |
Jacob Dlamini, Assistant Professor of History, Princeton University |
| Nov. 13
A Woman of Many Masks: Alice Sheldon as Climate-Fiction Pioneer and Anthropocene Prophet |
|
| Dec. 4
Salvage: Experiment, Engagement and the Environmental Humanities |
Allison Carruth, Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies, Princeton University; Associate Professor of English, University of California-Los Angeles |
Spring 2019
| Seminar Topics | Speaker(s) |
| Feb. 13 | Camille Dungy, Professor of English, Colorado State University |
| Mar. 13
Women and Men in the War Against Erosion: Gendering Water and Soil Conservation in Mao’s China |
Micah Muscolino, Professor of Chinese History, University of California-San Diego |
| Apr. 3 |
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| Apr. 10 | Marisol de la Cadena, Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies, University of California-Davis |
| Apr. 17
The Cloud Is a Factory: An Environmental History of Computing |
Nathan Ensmenger, Associate Professor of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington |
Fall 2018
| Seminar Topics | Speaker(s) |
| Sept. 26
Erasures |
Fazal Sheikh, Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and the Humanities, Princeton Environmental Institute |
| Oct. 3
The Future Is Now: Rising Waters and Colonial Ghostscapes |
Anne McClintock, A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Princeton University |
| Oct. 17
Ecological Landscapes in Paleoanthropology and the Fates of Human Nature |
Erika Milam, Professor of History, Princeton University |
| Nov. 7
Wild Boar Chase: The Half-Life Politics of Nuclear Things in Coastal Fukushima |
Ryo Morimoto, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University |
| Nov. 28
Whale Calling: Listening to Zakes Mda from Hermanus, South Africa |
Gavin Steingo, Assistant Professor of Music, Princeton University |
Spring 2018
| Seminar Topics | Speaker(s) |
| Feb. 14
Decolonizing Climate Justice: Indigenous Movements |
Kyle Whyte, Timnick Chair in the Humanities, Michigan State University |
| Feb. 28
So Moved: On the Gelatinous |
Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Associate Professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies, Pomona College |
| Mar. 14
Colonial Semiotics |
Monique Allewaert, Associate Professor of English, Cultures and Histories of the Environment, University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Apr. 4
Sons and Daughters of Soil |
Lesley Green, Director of Environmental Humanities South and Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Cape Town |
| Apr. 18
The Decontextualized Human: On Roots and Rootlessness |
Christie Wampole, Associate Professor of French and Italian, Princeton University |
Fall 2017
| Seminar Topics | Speaker(s) |
| Sept. 20 | Ashley Dawson, Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and the Humanities, Princeton University |
| Oct. 4 | Laurel Mei-Singh, Postdoctoral Fellow, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Princeton University |
| Oct. 25 |
Jeffrey Whetstone, Professor of Visual Arts in the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University |
| Nov. 8
A Darkness Not Perpetual: Endless Mountains in Energy Transition |
Robert Emmett, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Roanoke College |
| Nov. 29
Eco Swaraj: Can India’s Model of the Micro Transform Development for the 21st Century? |
Meera Subramanian, Journalist |