The field of environmental sustainability is about more than just science. The recently launched Penn Program in Environmental Humanities Fellowship aims to convey the facts and numbers in more relatable ways to revolutionize the way we think about sustainability.
Launched last spring, the program is a new initiative to bring together students and faculty to discuss and produce projects related to the field of Environmental Humanities. The seven undergraduate fellows will showcase their projects electronically and at a curated gallery show in April. Though similar programs have existed for graduate students and faculty members, this program is the first of its kind to exclusively target undergraduates.
Austin Bream, a Wharton and College sophomore, will use his fellowship to travel to Berlin. There, he will create a photography exhibit on the relationships between different spaces and sustainability.
“Increasingly, people know the facts about climate change, but that’s really not encouraging action. Science alone, or humanities alone isn’t going to get the job done,” Bream said.
The Environmental Humanities is a new field of study that engages topics of ecology and sustainability in an interdisciplinary way, like Bream plans to do with his photos. Researchers in the field aim to combine the natural sciences and the humanities to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the environment.
Though the role of science in understanding the environment is commonly accepted, the humanities can play just as pivotal a role. “Scientists haven’t done a very good job of figuring out how to tell the story so that people will listen to them,” program founder and Director Bethany Wiggin said. People who study humanities, she added, "understand how to make meaning in the world.”
“We teach people how to make sense of things, and we’re really good at it,” she said.
Other projects the fellowship program has planned include a social media photography campaign, an interview series and a written manifesto. The fellowship program operates in conjunction with the PPEH WetLand program, which will install a floating lab on the Schuylkill River.
The program will also launch a Design-a-Thon competition Thursday evening at the Penn Women’s Center to create a logo.
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