Whether you're dreaming up a research project abroad, exploring ways to collaborate with friends and partners on campus, or coming up with the next world-changing idea, the Center is here to support and celebrate your vision.
Youth Art Month is an opportunity for students from K-12 to showcase their work in a gallery setting and share their achievements with their families and their community.
This year’s humanities theme culminates with the residency of our Islands Distinguished Fellow, Craig Santos Perez. His residency will take place from April 1 – 2, and include a craft talk and public poetry reading.
The seventh annual Summer Institute seminar leaders will be Mishuana Goeman, Professor and Chair of Indigenous Studies, University at Buffalo; Macarena Gómez-Barris, Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Director of the Center for Environmental Humanities, Brown University; Nicole Seymour, Professor of English and Graduate Advisor for Environmental Studies, California State University at Fullerton; and Nicole Starosielski, Professor of Film & Media, University of University of California, Berkeley.
While the word “island” might conjure an image of isolation—the castaway on a pile of sand with a single palm tree—long, global histories of insularity and archipelagic thinking complicate such an image. Islands have been sites of dynamic cultural exchange for centuries. Today, islands carry an outsized burden in terms of environmental catastrophes, historical legacies of colonization, and the continued subjugation of marginalized people. De-centering continental landmasses, our theme surfaces these complex tensions and invites our communities to think through pressing contemporary issues. Island residents and their diasporas offer generative ideas for responding to the climate crisis through solidarities, rather than extractive technologies. Islands—as both place and theoretical framework—open myriad transdisciplinary possibilities. At its heart, archipelagic thinking enables endless fluid connections that illuminate relational power dynamics.
Mark your calendars for the 2024 Colby Summer Institute in Environmental Humanities! If you are an academic, artist, activist, or independent scholar with a passion for the Environmental Humanities, we invite you to join us in beautiful Maine from July 28-August 4, 2024, for a week of seminars, lectures, workshops, field trips, and other events.