IHR Fellows Program
The 2007-2008 theme is “The Humanities and Sustainability.”
2007-2008 ASU FELLOWS
Sustainability, Sense of Place, and Cultural Preservations
Project Directors:
Elizabeth A. Brandt, Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Steve Semken, Assistant Professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration
Consultant, Christopher Boone, Associate Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change and School of Sustainability
Abstract:
This is a transdisciplinary field study of senses of places held by three different ethnic groups focused on the cultural landscapes in the Superior, Arizona region. This landscape is endangered by two potential developments: resumption of copper mining; and/ or continued development of urban sprawl encroaching on a rural landscape. Some places in this landscape are culturally very significant to the Yavapai, the Western Apache and the Hispanic community in the town, as well as forming important landmarks in the region. The community of Superior is also attempting to craft a sustainable future that is not dependent upon mining, having learned a bitter lesson when a prior mine shut down and turned it into a semi-ghost town. The town supports renewed mining, but wants it to be sustainable. We see this as a unique opportunity to research and develop an understanding of how to examine the difficult issues of differences in cultural meanings in sense of place and issues of cultural preservation before massive forces change the scenic and historic character of the area. We will use several distinct methods and do multi-sited examination of the issues of place, sustainability and cultural preservation. Taking basic data before the area is significantly changed will allow us to use this as a pilot project for additional funding.
Sustainability, Systems, and Ecological Art
Project Directors:
Julie Anand, Assistant Professor, School of Art
David Birchfield, Assistant Professor, Arts, Media and Engineering
Claudia Mesch, Assistant Professor, School of Art
Sustainability is rarely examined at length in humanities scholarship. Nevertheless, since the early ‘70s, many artists and writers have used their work to raise consciousness and educate the public, not only about the problems that globalization poses for natural and ecological systems, but also to examine the problematic dynamics that arise when systems like those of informatics and cybernetics are established.
Central to our research in the domain of eco-art is the examination of systems that underpin much of this activity. Through their work, many artists have explored natural and man-made ecologies including water resource distribution networks, the spread of airborne pollutants, and global climate patterns. As such, the exploration of such systems is at the heart of our research and such study will allow our project to cut across the arts, sciences and humanities. With its tools for interactive 3D data visualization and audio sonification, AME’s SMALLab provides a flexible and extensible infrastructure for simulation, modeling, and manipulation of these complex systems. We propose to utilize SMALLab as a research tool to simulate and engage such systems in order to better articulate and enrich our understanding of the processes that are utilized by eco-artists past and present. We will leverage SMALLab as an active catalyst for discussion and debate around these topics within the ASU community, and we will invite our invited guest collaborators to employ it as a resource to aid and extend their own research. One outcome of our work will be the realization of a technological and conceptual framework for the integration of art, science, and criticism around the notion of complex systems, which lies at the cross-section of sustainability and art. We will encourage our invited collaborators to discuss the possible critical and methodological implications that such self-reflexive use of digital technologies poses for work and research in eco-art more generally. This direct engagement with systems research will complement our proposed theoretical and metaphorical approaches to sustainability research, and will allow our team to achieve a broad transdisciplinary impact that will lead to increased opportunities for future funding and collaboration.
The IHR Fellows team, Sustainability, Systems, and Ecological Art (http://www.asu.edu/clas/ihr/faculty/fellows/2007-2008SustainabilityTheme.html), will roll out the Art Truck this weekend. Please join us this Friday and Saturday, December 7 and 8, as the Art Truck takes its maiden voyage in Tempe and Phoenix. The Art Truck delivers art for environmental awareness and ecological change to various sites in the Valley. The Art Truck will be part of First Fridays events on December 7, in the lot adjacent to Eye Lounge at 419 E. Roosevelt (at 4th St.) in Phoenix from 7 to 9 p.m. A second Art Truck exhibition on the theme of water will be on view between 4 and 9:30 p.m. as part of the Tempe “Fantasy of Lights” Holiday Boat Parade, on Saturday December 8 at Tempe Town Lake (Booth 19). The artworks on view each day are listed below. As always, the Art Truck is free and open to the public. We look forward to seeing you!
Julie Anand, David Birchfield, Robert Gordon, Claudia Mesch
Coordinators for the Ecological Art, Systems and Sustainability Project
Friday, December 7 Gallery
From the Car, Betsy Schneider and Frank Ekeberg
Sound and video installation
Flooding Phoenix, Dan Collins
Video projection
Heliopolis, Mary Bates Neubauer
Video and image wrap
Saturday, December 8 Gallery
The Castaways Project, Steven Feld and Virginia Ryan
Sound and video installation
Profile in Sound, Shifting Landscape, David Birchfield
Water Lens, Julie Anand
Photography and image wrap
Mary Bates Neubauer, image wrap
SPRING 2008 VISITING FELLOWS
Lorraine Dowler
Director of Women's Studies, Associate Professor of Geography
Pennsylvania State University
Feminist Fronts: Invention of Gendered Traditions of War
Lissa McCullough
Independent scholar; adjunct professor of Religious Studies
Muhlenberg College
On the Ambiguous Religious Roots of the Environmental Crisis
Dan Shilling
Independent scholar; adjunct faculty
ASU Department of English
Aldo Leopold: The “Fierce Green Fire” of Sustainability
The Aldo Leopold Centennial Celebration 2009 web page
August 2008 Update: Dan Shilling and Joan McGregor, ASU Philosophy Department, will conduct a 2009 NEH Summer Institute for College Teachers, A Fierce Green Fire at 100: Aldo Leopold and the Roots of Environmental Ethics.
Check back for more details.