Nature in the Anthropocene

The Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH), which aims to generate knowledge about the environment and sustainability by bridging the sciences and the humanities, brought together a diverse group of activists, faculty, and students for the Urban Nature, Natural City event on April 10.

From left to right: Penn professor Bethany Wiggin, Deenah Loeb of the City Parks Assocation, Drexel professor Richard Horwitz, Penn professor Paul Schmidt, Penn professor Etienne Benson, and Princeton professor and Urban Ranger Jenny Price

The roundtable of experts gathered to discuss Nature in the Anthropocene. Anthropocene, which means the age of the human, is a term coined to identify a new geological “era” to mark the beginning of the period when humans first began to play a major role in affecting areas like climate change, biodiversity, and trace elements. “It’s a useful word because by creating a name for humans’ impact on the environment it helps draw attention to the massive changes our species is bringing about,” says Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures Bethany Wiggin, director of PPEH, who worked to organize the event. “This includes everything from species and habitat loss to ocean acidification levels.” The panelists, who included Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science Etienne Benson and Associate Professor of Biology Paul Schmidt, discussed everything from biological evolution to the philosophical musings of naturalist author Henry David Thoreau.

“The event was a lot of fun,” says Benson, author of Wired Wilderness: Technologies of Tracking and the Making of Modern Wildlife. “Any conversation that can move from the similarities between folk songs and biodiversity to the ideas of the early 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Schelling to ecological niche construction by the human species in the 21st century—and make perfect sense while doing so—is a conversation worth having.”

PPEH’s core objective is to provide fellowships to undergraduates in order to create a digital forum and campus audience for their projects. Anthropology major Jose Romero, C’15, is working on a transnational project about Mexican farm workers on both sides of the border, and how they incorporate sustainability practices. Tan Chan, C’15, LPS’16, a senior undergraduate and a first-year Master of Environmental Studies student, is creating a documentary series about how sustainability is embraced and advanced by Philadelphia's different cultural communities.

“I’ve had to get used to holding class with people in multiple different sites,” laughs Wiggin.  “Our fellow who’s in Australia gets up at six in the morning for the meeting time here at two in the afternoon. And at that time, it’s eight on Friday night in Berlin where our fellow Austin Bream is, who actually did a ton of organizing for the Urban Nature event remotely.”

Urban Nature, Natural City also featured a keynote address by Jenny Price, a visiting environmental humanities professor at Princeton University and co-founder of the Urban Rangers Projects, a performance art ensemble dedicated to increasing environmental awareness. The Los Angeles group’s members assume the mantle of park rangers and lead participants on tours through public spaces not often identified with nature

“They might lead a tour of the L.A. River, this concrete basin that was made famous in the movie Terminator 2, to tease out in a very playful way all kinds of notions about what we consider nature,” says Wiggin. “Here is a group that is really thinking beyond the scope of traditional projects and using creativity to increase awareness.”

The event was made possible with help from the Green Campus Partnership and the Penn Humanities Forum. Wiggin says PPEH is at its core a grassroots initiative. “This is a program that was borne of student demands. Now we’re trying to help graduate students figure out ways that they can build their own program, and we’re also exploring the possibility of new faculty lines. The Environmental Humanities is being embraced by our peer institutions country-wide and globally. It’s an exciting time.”

To learn more about the the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, visit their website here.