Climate change converges with humanities at Louisiana field school

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July 5, 2019

As Thomas Davis and his students gazed across the murky swamps of southern Louisiana, the striking connection between the region’s environmental injustices and their causes became tragically evident.

“You have these white, hulking chunks of dead cypress trees everywhere, and then over in the distance you see a massive petrochemical refinery,” Davis said. “These juxtapositions are so naked down there — it’s so apparent wherever you go.”

Davis, an associate professor of English, recently led the Livable Futures Louisiana Field School, where he and associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studiesMary Thomas, guided nine students through post-Hurricane Katrina Louisiana. 

Photo, above: Ohio State students plant vegetation throughout Louisiana coast. Photo credit Riley Sayers.

From May 5-11, the group explored the state’s southeastern coastline, replanted vegetation throughout the marshes to help resuscitate damaged ecosystems, workshopped with local environmental artist Hannah Chalew and toured the bayou with a New Orleans-based filmmaker and documentarian.

The trip was an opportunity for the students to see environmental justice firsthand and to connect with those impacted by it the most.

“In a place like Louisiana, all of these questions around climate change, land loss, fossil fuels and social justice feel very urgent and interconnected,” Davis said. “The hope is that this course helps students think about the climate crisis and various environmental problems as something that’s not far away; we have to think now in innovative ways and respond with the urgency the crisis deserves.”

Livable Futures began in fall 2018, and its beginnings take root in the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme (GAHDT). In 2016, Davis, Thomas and associate professor of history Christopher Otter collaborated on a two-year pilot project for GAHDT that brought together disciplines in the arts and humanities to shed light on topics surrounding environmental justice and advocacy. 

The success of the pilot project gave way to Livable Futures, a collaborative network of arts and humanities faculty who draw on their collective expertise to change cultural thinking surrounding climate change and planetary sustainability.

“The sciences aren’t going to solve climate change alone,” Davis said. “We have mountains of data and information, and still carbon emissions climb higher and the U.S. continues to engage in intensive fossil fuel extraction. The climate crisis is a social and cultural problem as well. So how do we begin to understand those dimensions? The humanities have specific kinds of expertise and knowledge, and we are very well-positioned to contribute to and maybe change the way we think about environmental crises.”

See more about what the group learned and experienced at the field school in Louisiana