Water Ecologies is a two-week summer institute that highlights interdisciplinary approaches to water by uniting intellectuals to workshop writing and works in progress. This seminar-style institute explores the importance of bodies of water and the role these sites play in constructing and deconstructing humanistic knowledge about the environment, the human, the nonhuman, narrative, and culture. Due to COVID restrictions, the institute will be remote for 2021. 

We employ “ecology” as a term that is deliberately broad and discipline-inclusive so as to envision space, habitat, network, and interconnection. We invite our participants to further explore historical, narrative, artistic, and filmic relationships with water. Water Ecologies queries water and aqueous environs so as to strengthen and contribute to humanistic inquiry about the human and nonhuman environment.

Over six days–Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for two weeks–participants will engage with four plenary speakers: Hester Blum (Pennsylvania State University), Melody Jue (University of California, Santa Barbara), Melanie Kiechle (Virginia Tech), and William Knight (Ingenium –  Canada’s Museums of Science & Innovation). In addition, participants will be placed in small, interdisciplinary groups to workshop articles, essays, conference talks, or books in progress. The institute will close with a reflection on pedagogy. 

To foster an intimate atmosphere that includes rigorous and constructive feedback, participation is limited to 24 individuals. Faculty, adjuncts, independent scholars, and advanced graduate students are welcome to apply. We are mindful of the care work and additional stressors that have accompanied scholarship in the pandemic, and as a result, we will offer each participant a $250 stipend. 

Water Ecologies is made possible by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Bucknell Humanities Center, Bucknell’s Dean of College of Arts & Sciences, and Bucknell’s Environmental Humanities Working Group. 

For questions or comments about Water Ecologies, please contact Prof. Jeremy Chow (j.chow@bucknell.edu).