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About Us

ANTH 310: TRANSDISCIPLINARY ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES

This digital platform is a product of the collective work of a group of undergraduate and graduate students who took ANTH 310: Transdisciplinary Environmental Humanities in Fall 2020 taught by Professor Kristina Lyons and Professor Marilyn Howarth and our collaborations with a group of scholars, scientists, lawyers, artists,  NGO workers, community organizers, and environmental activists in Colombia . Emergent transdisciplinary fields, such as the environmental and medical humanities, reflect a growing awareness that responses to contemporary environmental dilemmas require the collaborative work of not only diverse scientists, medical practitioners, and engineers, but also more expansive publics, including artists, urban and rural communities, social scientists, and legal fields. Our course was inspired by the need to attend to environmental challenges and their health, justice, and knowledge production implications, as inherently social concerns.  Through our different lenses, we attempted to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and scholarship by engaging students in discussions and research that brought together the arts and sciences in relation to issues of urban air pollution, deforestation, and water contamination, among other environmental health problems in both Colombia and the United States. 

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EVA SPIER
Undergraduate student
University of Pennsylvania 
RACHEL SWYM
Undergraduate student
University of Pennsylvania 
MARCELA GÓMEZ
Undergraduate student
University of Pennsylvania 
GILLIAN DIEBOLD
Undergraduate student
University of Pennsylvania 
FAITH BOCHERT
Undergraduate student
University of Pennsylvania 
LAURA CRAWFORD
Undergraduate student
University of Pennsylvania
PEARL LIU
Undergraduate student
University of Pennsylvania 
PABLO AGUILERA
Ph.D. student, Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania
 
JEANNE LIEBERMAN
Ph.D. student, Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania
 
REBECCA WINKLER
Ph.D. student, Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania
 

Throughout the semester under the unique conditions provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic, students worked on the creation of a public engaged Digital Environmental Justice Storytelling Project with a range of collaborators in Colombia that showcases community-oriented efforts to engage in environmental justice and to evaluate public health conditions and environmental exposures.  This platform invites you to explore how different communities and citizens in Colombia engage with the arts and sciences in their activism and daily life to navigate environmental health uncertainties, defend territories, and transform urban and rural life conditions. The site is meant to serve as a resource for anyone interested in practical examples of environmental humanities scholarship and environmental justice struggles in urban and rural areas of Colombia, Latin America, and the Americas more broadly.

MARILYN HOWARTH
Adjunct Associate Professor
of Pharmacology
University of Pennsylvania 
KRISTINA LYONS
Assistant Professor
of Anthropology 
University of Pennsylvania 
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