Reading Group as Method for Feminist Environmental Humanities

Abstract

This article argues that reading groups are a collective field building and research method in Feminist Environmental Humanities, an interdisciplinary scholarly area at the intersections of feminist social justice and environmental concerns. We begin by historicising three Australian Feminist Environmental reading groups (COMPOSTING Feminisms, Eco Feminist Fridays, The Ediths) within a longer feminist tradition, then demonstrate how they respond to declining research funding in the neoliberal university and accelerating ecological crisis. Drawing on survey data, we first thematically code and analyse the results to categorise the groups’ functions and impacts. Departing from more traditional data analysis, we then develop a method of interpretation called ‘transversal poetics’. Via a captioned photo essay, we unpack how transversal poetics yields new ways of reading the data. We show how this practice-led, creative method reveals additional themes and crystallises the reading groups’ key ethos: building situated communities of care across difference. Overall, the research underscored that while never free of ethical tensions and compromises, Feminist Environmental reading groups can be a playful, affirmative and generative method for field building and research.