Seminar
How can university study of literature and religion fruitfully incorporate hands-on learning in pursuit of environmental justice and restoration locally? This seminar invites active reflection on this question in dialogue with examples from a class on Literature and Environmental Justice at Baylor. Participants will consider the possibilities and the real challenges entailed in involving literature classrooms in cultivating local refugia, pockets of life in a wounded world that nurture flourishing futures. Seminar members will engage in exercises intended to help them identify and grow related opportunities at Notre Dame.
Background: The class featured in this seminar contributes to Baylor’s interdisciplinary Environmental Humanities Minor (EHUM). Students engage diverse authors and creators from the nineteenth century to the present who draw on their cultures, faiths, and imaginations to respond to abusive food systems and imagine and cultivate refugia. “Refugia” is a term borrowed from biology by ecophilosophers and ecotheological writers to describe pockets of life in a wounded world where healing, resilience, and possibility can grow from the ground up and interconnect to form ecosystems of mutual support and flourishing. Students engage in experiential and community-engaged learning and writing with a collective devoted to cultivating local refugia that brings together our campus, community, and city, and in which EHUM is a leading parter: the Sustainable Community and Regenerative Agriculture Project (SCRAP). In three years, SCRAP has involved over 20,000 students, faculty, and community members in addressing challenges in food insecurity, food waste, and interconnected health and environmental suffering through place-based education and a growing ecosystem of gardens, urban farms, composting hubs, and educational programs.