Overview

The emerging sustainability initiatives developing on university and college campuses worldwide and the increasing focus on environmentalism in various scientific disciplines often fail to converse with scholars in the humanities. Yet the past five years have seen the birth of a vibrant interdisciplinary field, the environmental humanities. Scholars of the environmental humanities engage with the natural and social sciences, whose expertise is crucial in addressing current planetary crises such as global climate change. Yet the expertise of the sciences in diagnosing environmental problems has not, as of yet, translated into a coherent vision of sustainability. The focus on narrative skill, critical thinking, historicity, culture, aesthetics and ethics central to the humanities and to humanistic social sciences provides a crucial research complement to the endeavors of scientists. The ecological value of humanities scholarship has never been more clear. Resilience aims to place the environmental humanities at the center of conversations about our ecological futures. We aim to invite a broad agenda for academic humanists interested in the sustainability project and to create a venue where the humanities can reach a diverse academic audience and contribute to larger shifts in perception of what resilience is and can be.