Discussions about melancholy and mourning pop up in a wide range of disciplines. For scholars in environmental studies, understanding these concepts is important as we try to figure out how to deal with the unprecedented environmental losses of our time. In the first part of this two-part episode of CoHearence, we explore the history of melancholia and why it’s important for thinking about environmental issues. Faced with an increasing amount of environmental destruction and frightening levels of species extinction, we will ask how we might begin to learn to grieve the lost objects everywhere around us. Featuring professors Cate Sandilands and Peter Timmerman from the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) at York University, and Susan Moore a part-time faculty member at FES and psychoanalytical candidate at the Toronto Psychoanalytical Institute, we’ll map out Freud’s thinking on mourning and melancholy and draw links to our current environmental state. If we think of our culture as a melancholic culture, how might we better understand commodity fetishism, the commodification of environmental loss, and where to go from here?
CoHearance Episode 1 was released in February 2012
Melancholy, Mourning, and Environmental Activism: Part 2 Making Loss the Centre - CoHearance - Episode 2
As we discussed in part one of this two-part series, melancholy and mourning permeate environmental thought and colour the way that we approach activism. In this episode, our focus shifts from the history of melancholy and mourning to specific examples of mourning in environmental and social justice activism. We search for ways that we might begin to engage in forms of resistant mourning that “worry the wound” in a more respectful, ethical, and productive way. How might mourning become part of an environmental activism that doesn’t busy itself with looking from one lost nature to the next, but instead both acknowledges loss and demands that we take the time and do the work required to move through those losses? Featuring Ralph Carl Wushke, United Church of Canada minister and Chaplin and PhD student at the University of Toronto, Ella Soper, part-time faculty at the University of Toronto and post-doctoral fellow at the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) at York University, and Honor Ford Smith, professor at FES we continue our conversations with Cate Sandilands, Peter Timmerman, and Susan Moore from FES about the importance of mourning for environmental thought and activism. We ask: how can mourning be political? What can resistant mourning look like for environmentalists? What is the role of writers, poets, and artists in mourning environmental loss?
CoHearance Episode 2 was released in March 2012
Poetic Nature(s): Literature and Politics at the Green Words/Green Worlds Conference Part 1 - CoHearance - Episode 4
In the fall of 2011, ecocritics, writers, and poets from across Canada attended a conference at the Gladstone hotel in Toronto. This conference, entitled “Green Words/Green Worlds: Environmental Literatures and Politics in Canada,” focused on the relationship between the cultivation of an environmental reading (and writing) practice and engaged eco-politics. In this CoHearence episode, we’ll use recorded material collected at the conference as well as a follow-up interview with the conference organizers to explore the ways that Canadian ecocritics and poets are engaging with the challenging environmental questions of our time. Featuring conference organizers Catriona Sandilands and Ella Soper as well as keynote presenters Adam Dickinson, Anne, Milne, and Molly Wallace, we’ll ask the question: in a world increasingly characterized by climate change, environmental disasters, and technology, why does literature matter? How can an environmental writing practice be a political act?
CoHearance Episode 4 was released in May 2012
Poetic Nature(s): Literature and Politics at the Green Words/Green Worlds Conference Part 2 - CoHearance - Episode 5
In the second part of CoHearence’s look at the 2011 conference, Green Words/Green Worlds: Environmental Literatures and Politics in Canada, we continue our investigation of the relationship between the cultivation of an environmental reading (and writing) practice and engaged eco-politics. Featuring excerpts from the Green Words/Green Worlds opening public poetry panel which included keynote presenters Brian Bartlett, Armand Garnett Ruffo and Rita Wong, we build on our discussion with conference organizers Catriona Sandilands and Ella Soper about why literature is important for environmental thought and action. We explore how and why Canadian ecocritics and poets are engaging with the challenging environmental questions of our time and provide perspectives for rethinking the way we imagine our environment.
CoHearance Episode 5 was released in June 2012
Botanical Colonialism and Biocultural Histories - Green Dreamer - Episode 362
Queer Ecology - Life Perspectives - Episode 5
Ecofeminism and Queer Ecology - The Ecopolitics Podcast- Episode 9
Writing on the Wall - Scale of Change - Chapter 3
In this episode, we welcome Catriona Sandilands. Having written, edited, or co-edited four books and close to 100 essays and articles, her research areas include queer and feminist posthumanities, critical plant studies, biocultural histories, ecocriticism, and public environmental engagement through literature and storytelling.
Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include cultivating plurality within the stories we tell, remembering histories of reciprocity coming from Western traditions, the connection between how we relate to the more-than-human world and our views of and experiences with sexuality, and more.
Green Dreamer Podcast Episode #362 released in August 2022.
The fifth episode of the intergenerational podcast series from Cumberland Lodge. In this episode we are joined by Andy Marks, a PhD student at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, and Professor Catriona (Cate) Sandilands, writer, teacher and Professor of Environmental Studies at York University. The discussion explores the subject of queer ecology, where it came from, and what influence it has in our world today.
Life Perspectives episode #5 released by the Cumberland Lodge in October 2022.
Ecofeminism is a critical lens that focuses on the many ways that gender shapes how people see and treat nature as well as people's interactions with their environments. Queer ecology disrupts prevailing heterosexist understandings of gender, sexuality and nature. In this episode, Dr. Catriona Sandilands and Dr. Sherilyn McGregor share with us the ways in which insights from these diverse fields serve to expand and deepen how we look at the policies and day-to-day practices of environmental politics.
The Ecopolitics Podcats episode #9 released in October 2020
Our third genus contains the Dragons of Social Comparison and Social Norms.
Every aspect of who we are is mediated by these Dragons: we adjust to the norms of our communities – the people we interact with, and the people we consider to be our peers around the world. As with everything, these norms are subject to change. Their flexibility is based on our collective willingness to share, and to listen. When it comes to the climate crisis, community conversations – in whatever form they may take – are integral to our ability to adapt.
Scales of Change was produced by Future Ecologies, with support from the University of Victoria. Chapter 3 was released in June 2020
