Events
Upcoming Events
Mellon Summer Incubator 2024 for Environmental Humanities Faculty at Reed
Past Events
Curiosity Is a Compass: An Artist Talk with Nina Elder
Monday, February 5, 2024 4:30pm
Eliot Hall Chapel
Artist Nina Elder travels to some of the most environmentally impacted, geographically distant, and economically important places on the globe where she researches how the natural environment is changing through human-centered activities. This performative lecture weaves together unlikely associations between piles of rocks, military secrets, grief, stolen meteorites, frayed ropes, black holes, and the need for curiosity.
Artist and researcher Nina Elder creates deep time perspectives where planets, geology, and ecosystems are in constellation with social issues and personal narratives. With a focus on changing cultures and ecologies, Elder advocates for collaboration, fostering relationships between institutions, artists, scientists, and diverse communities. Her work takes many forms, including drawings, murals, performance, pedagogy, and long term community-based projects.
Recent solo exhibitions of Elder’s work have been organized by SITE Santa Fe, Indianapolis Contemporary, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and university museums across the U.S. Her work has been featured in Art in America, VICE Magazine, Hyperallergic, and on PBS. Her writing has been published in American Scientist and Edge Effects Journal and other scientific publications. Elder’s research has been supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Rauschenberg Foundation, the Pollock Krasner Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. Elder migrates between projects, adventures, and her rural home in New Mexico.
Sponsored by the art department and the Mellon Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Reed. Free and open to the public. Reception to follow in the Eliot Hall faculty lounge.
Mellon Environmental Humanities and Social Justice Speaker Series
Thursday, November 30, 5:30 p.m. (Vollum Lecture Hall)
Right and Respectful Relations
JoDe Goudy (Yakama)
What are Right & Respectful Relations? With ourselves? With one another? With our surroundings? How are we to navigate this world with so many significant challenges? JoDe Goudy, the former Chairman of the Yakama Nation, advocates for environmental justice and the wellbeing of Native Nations and Peoples with Redthought.org, an educational resource center providing virtual platforms for events, conferences, workshops, and courses. Working for a sustainable future for all generations, he calls for a deeper understanding of cultural history, engaging with the Doctrine of Discovery and ongoing structures of settler colonialism in environmental justice movements today.
EH Open House
Friday, October 27, 4:30-6 p.m. (Prexy)
What is Environmental Humanities? Please join us for snacks, conversation, and brief presentations by participating faculty about the new courses and programs supported by the Mellon Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Reed.
Mellon Environmental Humanities and Social Justice Speaker Series
Friday, November 10, 1:30 - 3 p.m. (Eliot 314)
The Power to Persuade: Environmental Literature and Social Change
Join journalist and author Michelle Nijhuis (Reed ’96) for a discussion of literature’s ability to change human attitudes toward the ecosystems we depend on. We’ll talk about Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and John Muir’s Our National Parks as examples of persuasive environmental literature, examine whether and how each work accomplished its aims, and ask what these authors can teach us about literature’s role as a change agent in the climate crisis.
Friday, September 29, 1:30 - 3 p.m.
Eliot 314
Join New Yorker contributor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, visiting scholar in English and Theater at Portland State University, for a discussion of theater's role in transforming our environmental imagination. How can stories on stage offer new visions for our relationship to the places we inhabit and rehearse possibilities for collective action? And how might the Cherokee playwright and lawyer Mary Kathryn Nagle, with whom Dr. Pollack-Pelzner is collaborating on a documentary about indigenous sovereignty, offer a model for combining art and activism?
ASLE + AESS Conference: Reclaiming the Commons
July 9–12, 2023
Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon
The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and The Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) are excited to announce that they will hold their next conference jointly. The theme is “Reclaiming the Commons,” and the event will offer opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, networking, and professional development with a variety of sessions sponsored by both organizations.
Here are the Reed-connected events from the program (faculty presenting and the plenary session we’re sponsoring).
Sunday, July 9
1–2:30 p.m.
"Radicle Ecologies"
Kristin Scheible
2:45–4:15 p.m.
"Nineteenth-Century Ecology and Community"
Sarah Wagner-McCoy
4:30–5:45 p.m.
Keynote address
6–7 p.m.
Opening reception
Conference, cont’d
Tuesday, July 11 (ASLE)10:15–11:30 a.m.
Salmon Commons Plenary (Reed/Mellon sponsored)
Jeremiah “Jay” Julius and Carol Craig
1:15–2:45 p.m.
Reed sustainability tour
Rachel Willis
1:15–2:45 p.m.
"The (Mis)Uses of Water"
Laura Zientek
3–4:30
"Thinking on a Planetary Scale"
Jake Fraser and Lexi Neame
“The Miracle of the Commons”
On Wednesday, March 29, 2023, from 12-1 p.m. in GCC C-D Michelle Nijhuis (Reed '96), award-winning journalist and author, joined us for a discussion of her article “The Miracle of the Commons.” Co-sponsored by American studies and the new sustainability book club—a discussion series supported by the library, the sustainability office, and the new Mellon-funded Environmental Humanities Initiative—the event included a book giveaway with free copies of Michelle’s book Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction.