Project Lead: Whitney Bauman, FIU Department of Religious Studies
I sought a 12-month, individual, FIU Faculty Research Support in the Humanities Grant to complete archival research for an ongoing project, which develops an alternate history of environmentalism in the United States based in part upon the work and archives of Rachel Carson and Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
Unlike the idea of environmentalism that has its roots in the conservation and preservation movements and which focus primarily on humans “saving” nature, Douglas and Carson develop forms of environmentalism based upon the idea that humans (and culture and technology) are part of the rest of the natural world. An environmental narrative (re)placing humans (and culture and technology) within the rest of the natural world is important in our globalized world with a changing climate.