Environmental Humanities
The research node for environmental humanities focuses on research and education oriented towards societal issues in the fields of environment and climate. It seeks to understand and explain political, cultural, social, historical, aesthetical, and linguistic dimensions of areas such as sustainable development, natural resources, environmental policy, and environmental technology. An overarching aim for the node is to contribute with critical knowledge about the associations between humans, societal institutions, and the environment. The research and education are repeatedly interdisciplinary as they engage a range of different humanistic disciplines, such as ethnology, library and information studies, art history and visual studies, and history of ideas and sciences. Additionally, the node includes interdisciplinary collaborations with a number of natural and social scientific disciplines.
The doctoral course ”Cultural Critique of Sustainability” functions as the node’s main platform. The course discusses the cultural question of sustainability from two complementary perspectives. On the one hand, sustainability has become a discursive object which can and should be criticized from a wide range of humanistic positions: conceptual history, discourse analysis, historical, political, and cultural contexts. On the other hand, sustainability is also an analytical lens and a political goal which implies a thorough critique of modern culture in its historical, anthropological, literary, and aesthetic expressions. Focus will be on sustainability issues regarding land usage, nature, and the environment.