GREEN BAAS EVENTS (since 2024)

27 February 2026: Teaching Sustainability in American Studies

Teaching American Studies Network (TASN/GREEN BAAS) Online Event
Thursday 27 February, 1.00–2.00pm (UK time) | Register for the zoom link here

How can we meaningfully integrate discussion of sustainability and the environment into the teaching of American Studies?

This online event will explore practical, pedagogical, and disciplinary approaches to teaching sustainability in American Studies, drawing on the recently released Green BAAS: Environmental Teaching Audit 2025. We will consider:

• How sustainability is currently being taught in American Studies
• What works (and what doesn’t) in different institutional and curricular contexts
• Strategies for embedding environmental perspectives into existing modules and across the curriculum

A panel discussion will be followed by discussion and A&A, offering space to share ideas, challenges, and examples, and to build connections across Green BAAS and the Teaching American Studies Network.

Panellists: Elsa Devienne (Northumbria and GREEN BAAS co-lead), Stephanie Palmer (Nottingham Trent), Rachel Hermann (Cardiff), Dave McLaughlin (UEA).

Chair: Frankie Hines ( Birmingham Newman University)

Friday 4 April 2025: Let’s Write Together Fridays

Register for zoom link here:

• https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/K_-DAeXQR-WuterhsFoVLA

A supportive and convivial two-hour session where we put butts on chairs and words on the page. After a successful first session, we are keeping the ball rolling. We now propose to host a writing session on the first Friday of every month from April onwards.

Use the same zoom link for Friday 2 May, Friday 6 June and Friday 4 July always at 2-4pm GMT

Chair: Dr Elsa Devienne & Dr Rebecca Tillett co-leads for GREEN BAAS

Thursday 16 January 2025: New Year Special: Let’s Write Together!

Thursday 16 January 2025, 2-4pm (GMT), on zoom

Register for zoom link here:

• https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZElduurrjotEt0FdwVj4TpRb7RTVgu-wSF5

A supportive and convivial two-hour session where we put butts on chairs and words on the page. New Year, New Writing You? We certainly think so!

Chair: Dr Elsa Devienne & Dr Rebecca Tillett

Thursday 31 October 2024, 4PM, zoom

Link to register: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi…

Featured Speakers:

Ysabel Muñoz (Norwegian University of Science and Technology): “Islands of Transition: The speculative and decolonial transecopoetics of Roque Salas Rivera”

Jasmin Kirkbride (City, University of London): “Ecological re-sensitisation: revival in Jeff Vandermeer’s dystopian climate fiction novel Borne“

Eugénie Clément Picos (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris): Food sovereignty and environmental justice on the Navajo Nation

Chair: Dr Rebecca Tillett , co-lead for Green BAAS

Join us for this session dedicated to new research in the American Environmental Humanities. We are especially encouraging PGRs and ECRs working on environmental topics to join as we hope this event can be an opportunity to network and socialise.

Thursday 12 September 2024: Writing in/for the Environmental Humanities

Thursday 12 September 2024, 4pm BST, Zoom

Listen to the audio recording of the session below:

The Environmental Humanities is a growing field of interdisciplinary research that puts in dialogue the humanities and the natural and social sciences to bring new insights on environmental matters. New journals and book series have popped up in recent years, reflecting the exciting scholarship emerging on themes as varied as multispecies studies, petrocultures, coastal studies, energy humanities, extinction studies, and more.

But what are the challenges (and opportunities) of writing for an interdisciplinary audience about the environment? How can scholars breach the interdisciplinary divide and speak to all environmental humanists? Can environmental humanities writing help scholars reach a wider public?

Conceived with the needs and questions of early-career researchers in mind, this session brings together five experienced scholars who edit journals and/or book series about the environmental humanities to share with us their reflections on the field and the challenges and opportunities of writing in/for the environmental humanities.

We asked them to reflect on these questions:

• In your experience as editors, what defines excellent environmental humanities writing and can you give some examples that have inspired your own writing? 
• What makes writing for an environmental humanities audience different from environmental history/eco-criticism or other disciplinary type of writing about the environment?
• What are the strengths/challenges of environmental humanities writing?

After brief introductory statements by all featured speakers, we will open up the floor to a Q&A.

Featured speakers:

– Prof. Joni Adamson (Arizona State University), Co-Editor of the Routledge Press Environmental Humanities book series and Director of the Humanities for the Environment North American Observatory.

– Dr Hannah Boast (The University of Edinburgh), Associate Editor at Environmental Humanities and co-convener of the Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network

– Prof. Peggy Karpouzou and Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Series Editors of “Exeter Studies in Environmental Humanities: Past, Present and Future Econarratives”

– Prof. Isaac Land (Indiana State University), Co-Editor at Coastal Studies & Society

Chair: Dr Elsa Devienne (Northumbria University) & Dr Rebecca Tillett (UEA), co-leads for GREEN BAAS