Film still by Barron Bixler
At the ASLE 2025 conference in Baltimore, Allison Carruth and Bethany Wiggin will co-lead a hands-on workshop on the practice—and practicalities—of public environmental humanities work. Defining "public EH” capaciously, we plan to use case studies from our own past projects as models of hyper-local, community-based climate storytelling: a series of audio and multimedia documentary stories produced by Blue Lab (co-led by Carruth and Barron Bixler since 2021 and the Ecotopian Toolkit and My Climate Story projects (led by Wiggin since 2019 and 2017 respectively). These public and collaborative EH experiments and endeavors involve old and new media; reimagine the boundaries between scholarship, storytelling and making; foster collaboration across the arts, humanities and sciences; and aspire to foster practices of multigenerational and multidisciplinary research and co-creation.
More and less explicitly, they invite consideration about what research for just and sustainable futures should be and do. The questions that guide the workshop include: (1) How and to what ends are environmental humanities educators and students pursuing collaborations with artists, scientists, journalists, community organizations, and others? (2) What examples from our own institutions and communities provide models and/or cautionary tales for public EH? (3) What strategies enable the integration of specific disciplinary methods (e.g., textual criticism, archival research, ethnography, data visualization) and concepts (e.g., multispecies justice, vernacular science, queer ecology, environmental equity) in partnerships and projects that reach across both disciplinary and academic borders? (4) What strategies can foster dialogue and cooperation among diverse participants when environmental values, assumptions, and histories conflict? (5) What practical challenges do public EH projects face in terms of funding; time commitments; and the established ways that universities evaluate research, teaching, and service—and how can they be addressed?
The first 60 minutes will tackle these questions with an interactive “show not tell” about facilitators' past projects (as listed above). At the hour mark, we’ll organize into three teams for a public EH project design sprint during which we’ll plan speculative public environmental humanities projects. Each team will develop their project vision (perhaps taking off from a project drawing on group members’ experience and expertise), including a concept and collaborative roadmap as well as a timetable for the project’s design, budget, and implementation. Teams will show their plans in a design charrette, and we’ll conclude with an overall workshop debrief.