This month, HNY’s Online Community Conversations will focus on “Community and Climate Change,” with a series of questions that focus on the collision of culture, science, and global warming. We will be hosting this conversation on April 21st at 8:00 p.m. HNY’s Zoom-based Community Conversations are free with registration. Register here. To complement this conversation, we have curated a selection of articles and books that explore the cultural and community impacts of the climate crisis. Like all of HNY’s Community Conversations, this one will use a single brief text to get things going. This text will be provided after registration. […]
Environmental Storytelling in the St. Lawrence Watershed
“The North Country Art, Land and Environment 2020 Summit,” held this past September, brought together individuals and organizations from across the Adirondack region, using art and the humanities to think about local solutions to a global problem. The summit was organized by Blake Lavia and Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo of Talking Wings, an environmental filmmaking and storytelling collective, in partnership with St. Lawrence University, which hosted the summit. The project’s planning and implementation phases were funded in part by HNY Vision and Action grants, respectively. This interview, held in August before the Summit, by HNY’s Joe Murphy, is the second in a […]
How Do We Talk About the Environmental Crisis?
Reflections on “Turning the Tide: Communicating Climate Change.” In 2017, as part of the Buffalo Humanities Festival, HNY convened some of the most brilliant minds in New York to examine how the language and conversations around climate change have shaped our understanding of it, and why the divide between people is so vast. This year we revisited the conversation with one of the panelists, environmental historian Adam Rome, to reflect on where we were then and what the world looks like now. This interview, by HNY’s Joe Murphy, is the first in a series of pieces with scholars and grantees […]
Into the Rainforest with Community Conversations
Starting with one conversation on the environment, Mambo Tse has seen how Community Conversations can bring people together, and how those conversations can lead to other fruitful projects. From discussions on immigration and food insecurity came an idea for project exploring the community’s relationship to African history and how it impacts them today, which was funded by an HNY Action Grant. In this interview, Mambo shares how public humanities programming has helped her group engage with youth across New York City, in classrooms and afterschool programs, as well as the general public and elderly populations at senior centers discussing topics […]
Place and Story
By Rick Bass We are pleased to share the introductory essay for our newest Reading & Discussion theme: “Place and Story.” Humanities New York commissioned noted novelist, essayist, and environmentalist Rick Bass to curate a selection of texts that explore the manifold ways the American landscape influences our experiences and way of life. As with all R & D groups, the texts selected–which include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry–explore the theme from a variety of perspectives. We also ask our R & D Scholar-Advisors to pen an original essay contextualizing the selected readings. Below, in the “Place and Story” essay, Rick discusses each reading in the series within the […]
The Genius of Earth Day
In 2017 the Buffalo Humanities Festival’s theme was “Environments;” HNY’s panel event “Turning the Tide: Communicating Climate Science” included Adam Rome, Professor of History at the University at Buffalo and the author of The Genius of Earth Day. Humanities New York provided initial funds for the Buffalo Humanities Festival in 2014 and has been a proud sponsor for each year since. The Festival is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University at Buffalo in cooperation with Buffalo State College, Canisius College, Niagara University, and SUNY Fredonia as well as cultural institutions including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Burchfield […]
