The importance of hemispheric perspectives for the environmental humanities: reflections on bilingual digital environmental justice storytelling

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the global pandemic and online teaching, we co-taught the keystone course for the new environmental humanities minor at the University of Pennsylvania. Beyond introducing students to transdisciplinary modes of communication and environmental humanities analytical frameworks, we focused the course around building a public engaged collaboration with community organizations and civil society initiatives in Colombia. The final project for the class resulted in a bilingual Digital Environmental Justice Storytelling platform that invites people to learn how different communities in Colombia engage with the arts and sciences in their activism and daily life to navigate environmental health uncertainties, defend territories, and transform urban and rural life conditions. In this article, we share our experience facilitating transdisciplinary international collaboration, bilingual translation, and multimodal methods in the building of the platform. We explain the pedagogical and methodological design of the project, placing emphasis on the flows of learning established between students and their Colombian community partners. The article includes the perspectives of different participants regarding their collaborative process, reflections about the importance of multilingual and hemispheric perspectives for the environmental humanities, and the impact of digital mediums as tools for environmental justice struggles and solidarity building.