In the academic year of 2024-2025, the students in the Research Master’s track Environmental Humanities initiated a reading group around specific themes.
The goal is to read a broad range of texts that relate to environmental humanities, being academic or literary works, and to critically examine these together. The group was started for students of the research master’s track Environmental Humanities, but is also open to students of related master’s programmes at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
If you are interested in joining, please send an email to fgw.ehc-comms@vu.nl.
The first session of the academic year was on Energy, Environment & Progress. Specifically, how the concept of ‘energy’ has shaped society and how it spurred our dependency on fossil fuels, hosted by Dr. Iris Burgers.
Readings:
- Hay, W.D., The Doom of the Great City: Being the Narrative of a Survivor, London (1880), entire novella (about 50 pages).
- Malm, Andreas, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. London; Verso (2016), pp. 1-36 (chapters 1-2).
- Zizek, S., Against Progress, Bloomsbury: London (2025), pp. 1-21 (first two essays).
The second session on Gender, Toxicity & Climate Change was run by Dr. Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, and explored the power relationship between gender, toxicity and pollution, by addressing a seemingly straightforward question: how does climate change enhance unequal gender relations?
Readings:
- Heather Davis, “Teflon: Slipperiness and the Domestication of Toxicity,” Catalyst, Special Section: Domestication of War, Vol. 9 No. 1 (2023): https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/38163.
- Cara New Dagget, “Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 2018, Vol. 47(1) 25–44.
- Margaret Atwood, “Death by Landscape,” in Wilderness Tips (New York: Doubleday, 1991).
The first session of the 2025-2026 academic year will be on foraging and will be held on 11 November.
Readings:
- Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press, 2015. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/64511, ‘Interlude. Dancing’, pp. 241-250 and ‘18. Matsutake Crusaders: Waiting for Fungal Action’, pp. 257-266.
- Melissa R. Poe, Joyce LeCompte, Rebecca McLain & Patrick Hurley (2014), Urban foraging and the relational ecologies of belonging, Social & Cultural Geography, 15:8, 901-919, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2014.908232