News and Notes in the Humanities
At the March 2010 American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) Annual Conference in Portland,
Oregon, I chaired and co-organized a (lively!) roundtable on “The Humanities in Response to Ecological
Crises.” Our panelists were drawn from three professional groups—ASEH (Paul Hirt), SCB (David Johns),
and ASLE (Rochelle Johnson, Kevin Maier--ASLE is the Association for Study of Literature &
Environment). We discussed exploring the human dimensions of ecological crises through research,
pedagogy, and practice, and the contributions of humanities perspectives to understanding and solving
those crises.
Discussing the opportunities and pitfalls of collaboration across disciplines, environmental historian Paul
Hirt offered some advice for avoiding tokenism or sidelining when bridging disciplinary divides: “The best
results are when you as a humanities scholar are at the table actively shaping your role; or better yet if
you are one of the co-PIs conceptualizing the project from the start.” Paul also suggested some ways to
get to that table, including seeking formal affiliation with an interdisciplinary program; cross-listing your
courses or team-teaching with members of other disciplines; serving as a humanities scholar on an
interdisciplinary research grant and suggesting humanities questions to be incorporated into the project;
or proposing your own interdisciplinary project and recruiting scholars in other disciplines with whom
you’d like to work. Natural scientists seeking human dimensions connections might try similar approaches
in reaching out to humanities colleagues.
Thinking about such themes, I was taken with a recent documentary by public radio host Bob Edwards
program of the US military, the training and deployment of Human Terrain Teams. As his website
describes, “The idea is to incorporate social scientists and cultural anthropologists into military units on
the front lines to help better understand and solve the conflicts and misunderstandings that arise between
the local population and the troops.” His interviews focus on the big challenges and big payoffs of the
interdisciplinary integration of these teams, embedded into regular army units and deployed to
Afghanistan. The podcast is available at his program’s website.
Kate Christen (christenc@si.edu)
Humanities Representative
Board of Governors
