Humanities-led international hub comes to ASU

Acknowledge struggles and inequities that started long ago. Develop solutions for global challenges facing the world today. Create a better tomorrow.

Humanities, as a series of disciplines, uses lessons of the past and present to understand how humans can plan for the future. It dives into this metaphorical time travel by investigating the impact of human motivations, behaviors, desires and emotions. The humanities offer conceptual clarification, theoretical analyses, and critical explorations of who “humans” are, how they live, what motivates them, and how they imagine and work for change. The “way we feel about the world” alters the choices people make, said Joni Adamson, President’s Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Department of English and director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. Adamson is the founding director of the UNESCO BRIDGES Sustainability Science Coalition Flagship Hub, which will launch in April 2022 during the grand opening celebration of the Global Futures Laboratory’s new building, ISTB7.

The goal of UNESCO BRIDGES is to go beyond theoretical analysis and connect diverse communities of knowledge and action through project-based activities. It is the first humanities-led international sustainability science initiative within UNESCO. Adamson credits the work of the Humanities for the Environment (HFE) Observatories Network that she launched in 2013 with Sally Kitch, University and Regents Professor of women and gender studies, founding director of the Institute for Humanities Research and the Humanities Lab at ASU, as central to the creation of BRIDGES. The HFE network, alongside UNESCO’s Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme and the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences, are the co-founding partners of BRIDGES.

“The really exciting thing about BRIDGES is that the humanities have not been central to sustainability sciences, and now they will be. The humanities disciplines have a 360-degree perspective. We look all around — we’re conscious that where we’ve been could be very instructive for where we’re going,” Adamson said.

The BRIDGES Flagship Hub at ASU received a major strategic grant from President Michael M. Crow and administrative support from Peter Schlosser, vice president and vice provost of the Global Futures Laboratory. One of the primary activities of the Flagship Hub at the Global Futures Laboratory will be the BRIDGES Labs, which will partner with ASU’s Humanities Labs led by Kitch. The labs will use transdisciplinary, socially embedded course projects to broaden sustainability science, drawing on the expertise of all academic fields, as well as local, traditional and indigenous knowledge systems. Students will develop solutions to global challenges through community-facing initiatives where they will learn to work with local stakeholders in respectful, culturally sensitive and effective ways so that the communities are leading the efforts.

The international secretariat of BRIDGES will be led by founding Executive Director Steven Hartman, visiting professor in history and philosophy at University of Iceland. Hartman will be based at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, as well as the Flagship Hub in ISTB7. Adamson will work closely with Hartman to anchor a cohesive network of global and regional hubs. The BRIDGES hub will bring global attention to ASU, she said.

“When people look for expertise in the humanities — at the United Nations, Future Earth, International Science Council and other international organizations — they will look to BRIDGES and the Flagship Hub at ASU. In other words, they’ll be looking at ASU and this Flagship Hub that is networked all the way around the world,” Adamson said. “As host of UNESCO’s BRIDGES Sustainability Coalition, the Global Futures Laboratory becomes a powerful engine in building significant new capacities in the humanities, social sciences, arts and educational sciences at ASU and beyond.”

Seize the Moment awards seed grants to three projects

The inaugural recipients of seed grants from Seize the Moment — a collaborative initiative between Leonardo, the Humanities Lab and the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory — are:

Anthropocene

Anthropocene is an original, physical theater piece that explores the current geological epoch in which human activity has drastically impacted our climate, environment and social conditions. This multi year performance and research project, which includes multimedia projection design and an original musical score, dance and performance, brings together the people and disciplines of ASU’s School of Music, Dance and Theatre; Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts; School of Sustainability; and the Global Futures Laboratory. It will premiere at ASU in fall 2023.

Project leads:

Steven Beschloss (Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, College of Global Futures), Rachel Bowditch (School of Music, Dance and Theatre), Karen Jean Martinson (School of Music, Dance and Theatre)

Arizona Cares — Women’s Care Labor Testimonios

Arizona Cares — Women’s Care Labor Testimonios project engages Black and Latina women in the Phoenix metro area in composing testimonios, or first-person narratives, to document their experiences of negotiating care labor and paid employment during the pandemic. The project will compile participant testimonios into a public digital archive hosted by ASU. The online archive will be available for scholars, community practitioners and policymakers to inform future policy decisions and resource provisions.

Project leads: Stephanie Lechuga-Peña (School of Social Work), Michelle Stuckey (College of Integrative Sciences and Arts)

Turn It Around

Turn It Around focuses on the role of education in turning around environmental catastrophe. Mobilizing the power of socially engaged art to move people into action, this project is designed to move politicians, policymakers and educators into a different state of thinking, doing and being. At the center of the initiative is one of the most basic learning tools — a deck of flashcards — designed by youth for decision-makers. The deck features youth-created artwork depicting the climate crisis on one side, and motives, actions and facts on the other side.

Project leads:

Andrew Freiband (Artists’ Literacies Institute), Adriene Jenik (Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts), Ann Nielsen (Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College), Iveta Silova (Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College)