About
Objectified: Methods in Environmental Humanities is an exhibition featuring selections from the Joel Snyder Materials Collection and beyond. The materials and objects included in the exhibition represent a reckoning with some of the planet’s most pressing concerns, from climate change to biodiversity loss, through humanistic inquiry.
Staged in the CWAC Exhibitions space on the 2nd floor of the Cochrane-Woods Art Center during Winter Quarter 2024 in collaboration with Dr. Jessica Landau and students in the Methods in Environmental Humanities seminar offered by the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU), the exhibition foregrounds an interdisciplinary lens through which the contributors approach the environmental humanities. Students interrogate how humanistic disciplines such as art history, Indigenous studies, animal studies, comparative literature, and history serve as emerging methods through which we might understand the environment. Collectively, the student curators contemplate our everyday relationships with the built environment, natural resources, and stolen land through humanistic lines of inquiry.
To demonstrate how an interpretation can change depending on the methodological approach used or theoretical lens applied to an object, student curators were asked to produce two distinct labels using at least two different methodologies. To read both labels, as well as student explanations of their methodological approaches, click on an image from the exhibition.
Objectified: Methods in Environmental Humanities is co-curated by Dr. Jessica Landau and student curators from her Winter 2024 Methods in the Environmental Humanities seminar: Yufei Chen (AB’26, Comparative Literature), Jess Senger (AB’24, Environmental Science [major] & Environmental and Urban Studies [minor]), Damary Alvarez (AB’25, Global Studies & Human Rights), Jack McDonald (AB’25, Public Policy & Environmental Science), Mariana Reed (AB’26, Environment, Geography and Urbanization [major] & Education [minor]), Justin Daab (Fellow, Leadership & Society Initiative), and Owen Castle (AB’25, Math & Environmental and Urban Studies).
About
Objectified: Methods in Environmental Humanities is an exhibition featuring selections from the Joel Snyder Materials Collection and beyond. The materials and objects included in the exhibition represent a reckoning with some of the planet’s most pressing concerns, from climate change to biodiversity loss, through humanistic inquiry.
Staged in the CWAC Exhibitions space on the 2nd floor of the Cochrane-Woods Art Center during Winter Quarter 2024 in collaboration with Dr. Jessica Landau and students in the Methods in Environmental Humanities seminar offered by the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU), the exhibition foregrounds an interdisciplinary lens through which the contributors approach the environmental humanities. Students interrogate how humanistic disciplines such as art history, Indigenous studies, animal studies, comparative literature, and history serve as emerging methods through which we might understand the environment. Collectively, the student curators contemplate our everyday relationships with the built environment, natural resources, and stolen land through humanistic lines of inquiry.
To demonstrate how an interpretation can change depending on the methodological approach used or theoretical lens applied to an object, student curators were asked to produce two distinct labels using at least two different methodologies. To read both labels, as well as student explanations of their methodological approaches, click on an image from the exhibition.
Objectified: Methods in Environmental Humanities is co-curated by Dr. Jessica Landau and student curators from her Winter 2024 Methods in the Environmental Humanities seminar: Yufei Chen (AB’26, Comparative Literature), Jess Senger (AB’24, Environmental Science [major] & Environmental and Urban Studies [minor]), Damary Alvarez (AB’25, Global Studies & Human Rights), Jack McDonald (AB’25, Public Policy & Environmental Science), Mariana Reed (AB’26, Environment, Geography and Urbanization [major] & Education [minor]), Justin Daab (Fellow, Leadership & Society Initiative), and Owen Castle (AB’25, Math & Environmental and Urban Studies).
Label One
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Camille T. Dungy
Black American Woman, born 1972
First Fire, 2006
Poem from What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006)
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A changing landscape depicted within this “rouge sonnet” explores the intersection between youth, black identity, and the environment. Specifically, how these overlapping aspects of experience shape our views of the world and the world’s responses to us. Dungy challenges a surprising misconception that Black poets are not inclined towards nature poetry. She explains in an interview with the Library of Congress that Black poets have been crafting nature poetry for centuries, offering unique perspectives shaped by their identities in historical, economical, or cultural terms. The way our identity informs poetry may differ and change the final outcome of what the relationship to nature looks like to others. This poem invites you to reflect on the perspective of a black child growing up in a neighborhood surrounded by both nature and urban structures, prompting consideration of how their connection to the environment differs. But, beyond being just a child or Black, they embody the nuanced identity of a Black child. The poem subtly touches upon the experience of climatic changes from their perspective: one of innocence and vulnerability.
Label Two
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Camille T. Dungy
Black American, born 1972
First Fire, 2006
Poem from What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006)
—
This sonnet intertwines the delicate dance between humanity and the warmth we generate. The speaker transitions from playful engagement with natural elements like remnants of plants, snail shells, and leaves to the heat of her suburban surroundings. Dungy employs thermally contrasting language: colder when depicting moments in nature and warmer, almost scorching, diction when describing the built environment. Humans are responsible for creating this heat in Urban Heat Islands. This effect refers to surfaces such as asphalt and metal absorbing heat from sources like the sun, air conditioning, and vehicle exhaust. This absorbed heat radiates from man-made surfaces in urban areas. Notably, cities experience temperatures 1-7°F higher during daytime than rural areas, and with nearly 70% of the global population projected to reside in urban areas by 2050, Urban Heat Islands’ impacts become increasingly significant. This human-induced heat creates dire consequences like heat related illnesses and, tragically, loss of life. The poem channels this warmth through the sensitive soles of the feet, inviting contemplation on the profound connection between human actions and human–induced heat in our urban landscapes.
Speaking with the curators we decided to only move forward with “First Fire” to account for the size of the poem and ability to print it. The two methods I have chosen for the object labels are intersectionality and multispecies studies. Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. She originally created the term to be used in a legal setting after she noticed that the law was not working properly for Black women. Recently, intersectionality has been taken out of its original context and shifted to be misinterpreted as people using their identity as a way to hold power over others who don’t share that same identity. However, Crenshaw says that the point of intersectionality is to acknowledge the overlapping identities of a person “‘for more advocacy and remedial practices’ to create a more egalitarian system” (Coasten, 2019). This fit well as a method for the first label after researching more about how Dungy believes nature poetry should be shifted to include the voices of black and other POC poets because of how their relationship with nature might differ from what is considered the norm. Therefore, I tried to incorporate Dungy’s perspective and the poem itself within the first label. I also chose to add “woman” into the author’s background information to add to the intersectionality of the Dungy herself.
For the second label I chose a multispecies approach that also combines a bit of the scientific background of the heat and climate. I’m not entirely sure if I chose the best two species subjects to compare their relationship between but, I believe that the multispecies approach is best here because the interaction between humans and nature in many different ways is so interestingly depicted in the poem. The way I understand multispecies studies is paying attention to how the two species interact and share themselves to one another in layered ways. Therefore, I chose to focus on humans and the heat we generate as the two species subjects.
Bibliography
Cornelius, Keridwen. “How Phoenix Is Working to Beat Urban Heat.” Scientific American, 13 February 2019, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-phoenix-is-working-to-beat-urban-heat/.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum, vol. 1989, no. 1, 1989, p. 31. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclf.
Logan, Andrew. “Urban Heat Islands.” MIT Climate Portal, 16 April 2021, https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/urban-heat-islands.
Van Dooren, Thom, et al. “Multispecies Studies Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness.” Duke Press, 2016, p. 23.