2007-2008: The Humanities and Sustainability

During the 2007-2008 academic year the IHR Fellows projects demonstrated an expansive understanding of sustainability beyond its technological challenges by involving the long-term thinking, sense of history, attention to language and human creativity.  Additionally theese projects revealed an understanding of cultural and social institutions that are indicative of humanities scholarship, as well as necessary for creating and critiquing notions of sustainable communities and societies.

General project foci could include: human commitment to developing and using new technologies; rebalancing cherished traditions in light of wide-reaching material and cultural innovation; achieving a difficult consensus on social values, or redefining basic concepts, such as “civilization” and “economic growth.” 

More specifically, projects might address: the language, rhetoric, and terminology of sustainability; the impact of sustainable technologies on various racial, ethnic, and gender groups; the relationship of traditional cultures to the values and practices of sustainability; the politics, ethics, and/or art of sustainability; the interaction between human societies and the natural environment, including changing climate; the difficult balance between the values of cultural preservation and social innovation in the design of sustainable societies; and hidden agendas in the concept of sustainability, especially ideologies of race, gender, and class.