The inaugural Environmental Arts & Humanities Festival will be April 4–6. The festival features guest lecturers, walks, food, and more all around Sewanee. Be sure to take in the sights and sounds in our various opportunities throughout the Sewanee campus. Schedule is as follows.

9:30 a.m., Tuesday, April 4, in the Women’s Center Mary Sue Cushman Room, “The Other Iraq: Environmental Imaginaries of Kurdistan” with Diana Hatchett. The environmental imaginaries of “Kurdistan,” a territory encompassing portions of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, are central to claiming belonging and sovereignty in a contested landscape characterized as an “oasis” in the politically unstable Middle East.

11 a.m., Tuesday, April 4, in the Women’s Center Mary Sue Cushman Room, “Eating in the Oil Sands: How Boreal Forest Foods Speak to Us” with Janelle Baker. The Boreal forest in what is now known as subarctic Canada is a celebrated source of food and identity for Sakawiyiniwak (Northern Bush Cree) communities, despite a rapid influx of oil and gas and logging activities in the area. This talk will tell the story of Sakawiyiniwak stewardship, reciprocity, environmental monitoring, and survivance.

12:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 4, in the Women’s Center Mary Sue Cushman Room, Shinrin-yoku (Forest Bathing) with Karen Kuers. Lunch time half-hour talk (all welcome to listen and bring a brown bag lunch).

1:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 4, Medicine Walk with local Herbalist Jen Cline (Meet at Green’s View). Sponsored by the Farm Club.

3 p.m., Tuesday, April 4, Shake Rag Walk with Jon Evans (Meet at Green’s View). Have a look at the Cumberland Plateau’s Spring Flora.

7:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 4, in Convocation Hall, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Local Food Heritage” with Rick Stepp. This talk examines what localized Traditional Ecological Knowledge can teach us about global environmental issues and food systems. Case studies draw on long term research from two areas of the world with some of the highest biocultural diversity related to food: the Highland Maya Region of Southern Mexico and the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia.

10 a.m., Wednesday, April 5, Medicine Walk with Thomas Powell, (meet in front of Snowden, limit 25). A chance to locate edible and medicinal plants on the domain.

11 a.m., Wednesday, April 5, in the Women’s Center Mary Sue Cushman Room, Workshop I: Arts Based Engagement in Ethnobiology, with Janelle Baker. Participants will be invited to participate in a series of arts-based activities for engagement with ethnobiology, including relationships with more-than-humans, news sources, and reflections.

noon, Wednesday, April 5, in the Women’s Center Mary Sue Cushman Room, “Multispecies Entanglements in Great Lakes Agricultural Landscapes” with Lindi Masur. Engaging a Posthumanist Paleoethnobotany, this talk examines relationships between early farmers, their crops, weedy species, animals, and ancestors in agricultural fields to consider the agency of non-human actors in the construction of cultural landscapes and local cuisine. Lunch time half-hour talk (all welcome to listen and bring a brown bag lunch).

1 p.m., Wednesday, April 5, Herbarium Tour (Meet at Spencer Hall) with J.T. Michel.

2 p.m., Wednesday, April 5, in the Women’s Center Mary Sue Cushman Room, “Psychoactive or Spirit?: Sociality, Shamanism, and the History of Hallucinogenic Plants in South America” with Stephen Berquist. Psychoactive plants have long played a central role in Andean and Amazonian religion and cosmology. Recently, foreign tourists seeking shamanistic experiences have begun to impact local communities and economies, prompting a debate on the ethics and politics of psychedelic tourism. What can we learn by juxtaposing these debates in the present with plant-based rituals of the past?

3 p.m., Wednesday, April 5, Herbarium Tour (Meet at Spencer Hall) with J.T. Michel.

4:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 5, in the Social Lodge, Workshop II: Tasting Biocultural Diversity: Indigenous Tea from its Center of Origin in Southeast Asia with Rick Stepp. Participants will learn about tea and biocultural diversity and sample tea from the area where it was first domesticated in the Bulang Mountains.

7:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 5, in Convocation Hall. Tree listening, with David Haskell. Both literal and metaphorical listening to trees can help us to understand their lives. By using our unaided ears, recording and sonification technologies, and conversations with people whose lives are entangled with trees, we gain insights into the many ways that trees are champion ecological networkers.

10 a.m., Thursday, April 6, in the Women’s Center Mary Sue Cushman Room, “Ethnobiology: The Future of the Science of Survival” with Janelle Baker and Rick Stepp. Topics will include why humanity needs ethnobiology, the continuing relevance of the field, and jobs in applied ethnobiology.

This Festival is sponsored by the University Lectures Committee, SIPE (The Sewanee Integrated Program in the Environment), the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, the Department of English and the Department of Religious Studies.