Abstract
Public engagement in crowd-sourced science projects such as iNaturalist or the Audubon Christmas Bird Count is a long-established practice within environmental studies and sciences. As a corollary to these “citizen science” efforts, “citizen humanities” engages public participation in humanities research and/or with humanities tools such as creative writing, photography, art-making, or conducting and recording interviews. In this essay, we outline our work creating a citizen environmental humanities website, Herbaria 3.0, including our motivations, process, and theoretical underpinnings. This project draws upon the critical understanding within environmental studies of the importance of narrative and storytelling for fostering a connection and commitment to environments and nonhuman beings. Situated within the field of environmental humanities, our website solicits, collects, and archives stories about the manifold relationships between plants and people, inviting visitors to read, share, or write their own story for digital publication. The kind of environmental storytelling that results, we argue, can (1) enrich our conceptualization of attachment to places, (2) expand our notion of what “counts” as an encounter with nature, and (3) help us recognize the agency of individual plants. We conclude that similar citizen humanities projects are crucial to the ongoing work of environmental humanities and environmental studies at large, for it is through such public engagement that we can meet the cultural challenges that seeded, and the societal problems occasioned by, ongoing climate change.
Highlights
Herbaria 3.0 is a citizen environmental humanities website designed to encourage the sharing of plant stories from people around the globe
We argue that the kind of environmental storytelling that results from such engagement can (1) enrich our conceptualization of attachment to places, (2) expand our notion of what “counts” as an encounter with nature, and (3) help us recognize the agency of plant nature
We conclude that similar citizen humanities projects are crucial to the ongoing work of environmental humanities and environmental studies at large, for it is through such public engagement that we can meet the cultural challenges that seeded, and the societal crises that are occasioned by, ongoing climate change
Summary
Herbaria 3.0 (www.herbaria3.org) is a citizen environmental humanities website designed to encourage the sharing of plant stories from people around the globe. Situated within the growing field of environmental humanities, our website solicits, collects, and archives stories about the manifold relationships between plants and people, inviting visitors to read, share, or write their own story for digital publication. The Herbaria 3.0 project draws on the critical understanding within environmental studies of the importance of narrative and storytelling for fostering a sense of place (Tooth and Renshaw 2009) and a connection and commitment to local and global environments and nonhuman beings (Lin and Li 2018; Satterfield and Slovic 2004; Basso 1996). Herbaria 3.0 participates in growing efforts of environmental studies and environmental humanities scholars and educators to create spaces where people can share their personal experiences in nature. We conclude that similar citizen humanities projects are crucial to the ongoing work of environmental humanities and environmental studies at large, for it is through such public engagement that we can meet the cultural challenges that seeded, and the societal crises that are occasioned by, ongoing climate change
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