UMass, Amherst's new Bee Campus USA Committee is hosting a guided Summer Pollinator Bioblitz event on Sunday, 8/3 from 11:00 -1:00 on the UMass, Amherst Campus.

The event will begin by documenting pollinators on the wild edges of campus behind lot 12  using nets to catch and release pollinators and phones to submit images to iNaturalist, where they will automatically be added to our UMass pollinator-monitoring project. If time allows, we will then make our way to the nearby Governor's Drive Pollinator garden to document species there. Our goals are to have fun, learn, and document as many different pollinator species as we can.

This event will be a great opportunity to learn more about wild pollinators with experts and help us document pollinator species on the UMass campus so we can better support them!

Sign up here

Scout Turkel, Renaissance of the Earth Teaching Fellow

During this generative working group, we will read and write in critical relation to concepts of descent and extraction in poetry — falling into, getting stuck below, and leaving behind “the earth.” In comparative conversation with the Kinney Center’s rare book collection, we will consider an array of poets who move beyond and below the earth-as-surface to critique representations of extraction and descent in geologic, mythic, and poetic history. Texts to be examined include Adam Lonicer's Kreuterbuch (1564), Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1632 edition), Alice Notley’s book-length epic The Descent of Alette (1992), and Muriel Rukeyser’s poem sequence “The Book of the Dead,” first published in U.S. 1 (1938). These texts will provide starting points for responding to the notion of "descent," across disparate centuries, in the mode of poetry.

This working group is designed to provoke conversation, writing, and thinking in trans-historical and trans-spatial dialogue among poets, scholars, and community members. Experience with writing poetry is not required for participation, but a willingness to write and think in a collaborative and poetic mode is necessary.

The Earth Day Extravaganza is an special annual event focused on earth repair, sustainability, and celebrating the living planet we call home. This year the festivities will include the UMass Farmers’ Market, lots of student orgs, a smoothie bike, a Thrift Village, collaborative art, and more!

Organized by UMass Permaculture, Sustainable UMass, and the Student Government Association

Join Award-Winning author Caoilinn Hughes for a book reading and conversation on literature in the Anthropocene

The Alternatives begins with a lecture on plate tectonics and interrogates the burdens of building sanctuary in a climate changed world. It was described as a novel of "ferocious intelligence and furious wit" by The Guardian and named one of the best books of the 21st century by The Irish Times.

Hughes is the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, the Moth International Short Story Prize, the Irish Books Awards Story of the Year, a Cullman Center Fellowship at New York

Ecological crises threaten all forms of life on earth. Democracy too is endangered, as popular discontent, elite malfeasance, and unresponsive institutions imperil its survival. Present political concepts have proven inadequate to meeting these challenges, and their inadequacies are themselves symptoms of the failures of prevailing political, cultural, and ecological stories and practices. Our current social, political, economic, and climate render these challenges more important than ever. 

With their book, Earthborn Democracy, Ali Aslam, Joel Schlosser, and David McIvor address these considerations and more. The symposium will begin with a public lecture by Aslam, McIvor, and Schlosser and be followed by responses and group discussion.

This event is open to the public and all are welcome.

with Timon McPhearson, Professor of Urban Ecology and Director of the Urban Systems Lab (New School)

Dr. Timon McPhearson is Professor of Urban Ecology, Director of the Urban Systems Lab, and research faculty at the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. He is a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Contributing Author to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Commission on BiodiverCities.  In 2020 he was appointed by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to the NYC Panel on Climate Change (NPCC). He studies the ecology in, of, and for cities to advance resilience, sustainability, and justice. His books Urban Planet and Resilient Urban Futures are widely read and his most recent book Nature-based Solutions for Cities was released in 2023. 

Click here to join via Zoom

A Renaissance of the Earth Poetry Reading with Artist in Residence Felicity Sheehy (Princeton University)

Created in conversation with the Kinney Center’s early modern almanacs, husbandry guides, and botanicals, this collection of original poems explores enduring themes of seasonal instability that link our current climate crisis to early modernity’s little ice age. Artistic poet and early modern scholar, Felicity Sheehy, reimagines four months of the year —February, April, June, & November — in her original almanac, which will be displayed alongside Kinney Center collections in the library and gallery. 

In 2019 and 2020, Sheehy was named one of Narrative Magazine's 30 below 30 emerging writers. In 2021, her debut chapbook Losing the Farm won first place in the Munster Literature Centre's international chapbook competition. Sheehy is a poet and a PhD candidate in Renaissance Literature at Princeton University. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Republic, The Southern Review, The Irish Times, The Yale Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, P.N. Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. Her work has received an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Jane Martin Prize for U.K. residents under the age of thirty, and the Charlotte Wise Memorial Prize. Her work has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Community of Writers, the Fine Arts Work Center, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Narrative Magazine, Smartish Pace, the Banff Centre, the York Poetry Prize, and the Ledbury Poetry Festival. 

with Mike Beck, Director of the Center on Coastal Climate Resilience and AXA Chair in Coastal Resilience (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Professor Michael W. Beck is the Director of the Center on Coastal Climate Resilience and AXA Chair in Coastal Resilience at the University of California Santa Cruz and Co-Lead of the NSF CoPe Strong Coasts project. Mike aims to reduce risks to people, property, and nature in his work across science, policy, and practice. Mike served for 20 years as Lead Marine Scientist at The Nature Conservancy. He has advised government agencies in the US, Germany, UK, EU, Philippines, Jamaica, and Grenada, among others. He has collaborated with many global agencies and companies including AXA, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Lloyd’s of London, Risk Management Solutions, and the World Bank. Mike has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and numerous Op-eds in major papers including the LA Times, NY Times, The Hill, and the Miami Herald. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and a Pew Marine Fellow.

Click here to Join via Zoom

with Carolyn Kousky, Acting Chief Economist at Environmental Defense Fund

Carolyn Kousky is the Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy at Environmental Defense Fund. Dr. Kousky’s research examines multiple aspects of climate risk management and policy approaches for increasing resilience. She has published numerous articles, reports, and book chapters on the economics and policy of climate risk and disaster finance. She is a co-editor of A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation and author of Understanding Disaster Insurance: New Tools for a More Resilient Future.

Dr. Kousky has worked with many communities on resilience strategies and developing inclusive models for insurance and disaster recovery. She is the vice-chair of the California Climate Insurance Working Group, a university fellow at Resources for the Future, a non-resident scholar at the Insurance Information Institute, and a member of the Roundtable on Risk and Resilience of Extreme Events at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Dr. Kousky is currently an author for the economics chapter of the Fifth National Climate Assessment.

Click here to join via Zoom

with Dr. Maron Greenleaf, Assistant Professor of Anthropology (Dartmouth College)

Dr. Greenleaf is a cultural anthropologist, political ecologist, and legal scholar studying human-environment relations in this time of environmental change and crisis.Her research centers on how efforts to address linked environmental crises—like climate change and biodiversity loss—shape everyday life. She is interested in how these efforts shift people’s relationships with nature, including how they interact with, understand, value, and govern it. Topics of focus include efforts to protect and restore landscapes, make nature valuable, and create “green” economies, as well as related issues of environmental justice and land rights.

Her published work has centered on green capitalism, carbon credits, deforestation, tree planting, postindustrial restoration, and energy transitions in Brazil, the US, and the UK. This work includes her first book—Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon—and collaborative work on energy justice in the United States and South America. Her current research centers on tree planting and environmental restoration in postindustrial England.

A Lecture by Varshini Prakash
2025 Ellsberg Activist-in-Residence

Varshini has been a leader in the climate movement for more than a decade and was the former Director and co-founder of Sunrise, organizing thousands of young people in the fight to stop climate change, create millions of good, union jobs, and build racial equity through a Green New Deal. She is a proud UMass grad ('15), and currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

The event is free to attend, though RSVP is encouraged. 

Presented by Dr. Tony Reames the Tishman Professor of Environmental Justice and an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, where he founded the Urban Energy Justice Lab and the Energy Equity Project. He is also Director of the U-M Sustainability Clinic in Detroit. 

Professor Reames will discuss his career trajectory inside academia and government and his work on environmental and energy justice. This will include his thoughts on challenges, opportunities, and benefits of incorporating equity and justice considerations in STEM. This talk will be of particular interest to graduate students.

Evan A. MacCarthy (Director, Elements and Five College Visiting Associate Professor of Music History, UMass) will offer a guided listening session of excerpts of evocatively terrestrial music and sonic art from the last four centuries, ranging from the planetary "harmony of the spheres" or the expansive echoes of open landscapes to the vibrating resonances of tectonic, volcanic, and lithic forces or the whispering murmurs of verdant pastures, gardens, and forests, as well as urgent, musical warnings and mournful laments in the face of anthropogenic change. We will investigate how composers, musicians, and sound artists have found musical meaning in listening and creating on an elemental level with the mineral, organic, and geological features of Earth's long, layered histories.

Aaron Allen discusses Musicology & the Environment

Aaron S. Allen (2012 Fellow) is director of the Environment & Sustainability Program at UNC Greensboro, where he is also associate professor of musicology. His scholarship focuses on the relationships between music cultures and planetary pressures. Aaron has co-edited two ecomusicology collections: Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature (Routledge 2016, recipient of the 2018 Ellen Koskoff Edited Volume Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology) and Sounds, Ecologies, Musics (Oxford 2023). He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard with a dissertation on the nineteenth-century Italian reception of Beethoven. Aaron’s BA in music and BS in ecological studies are from Tulane.

Register Here for this online event

This event is co-sponsored by the Kinney Center and School of Earth and Sustainability.

Professor Annette Kehnel studied History and Biology at the University of Freiburg, Somerville College, Oxford, and LMU in Munich. She received her doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin for her research on Irish convent communities and taught at the TU Dresden, where she received her post-doctorate in 2004. Since 2005 she has held a chair in Medieval History at the University of Mannheim. She has published numerous works on her main topics of research: cultural and economic history and historical anthropology.

In The Green Ages, Kehnel explores sustainability initiatives from the Middle Ages, highlighting communities that operated a barter trade system on the Monte Subiaco in Italy, sustainable fishing at Lake Constance, common lands in the United Kingdom, transient grazing among Alpine shepherds in the south of France, and bridges built by crowdfunding in Avignon. Kehnel takes these medieval examples and applies their practical lessons to the modern world to prove that we can live sustainably—we’ve done it before!
 
From the garden economy in the mythical-sounding City of Ladies to early microcredit banks, Kehnel uncovers a world at odds with our understanding of the typical medieval existence. Premodern history is full of inspiring examples and concepts ripe for rediscovery, and we urgently need them as today’s challenges—finite resources, the twilight of consumerism, and growing inequality—threaten what we have come to think of as a modern way of living sustainably. This is a stimulating and revelatory look at a past that has the power to change our future.

Get 20% off your purchase by entering "GREENAGES" at checkout.

Alisha Rankin is a Professor of History at Tufts University. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Science from Harvard University. Her research interests include early modern European history (c. 1450-1700), the history of science and medicine, the history of pharmacy, and women's history. Her first book, Panaceia's Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany (University of Chicago Press, 2013) examines German princesses who became widely known and admired for their medical knowledge in the sixteenth century – and particularly for making medicinal cures. She has also co-edited a collection of essays titled Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500-1800 (Ashgate Press in 2011). Her latest book, The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science (University of Chicago Press, 2021), looks at the important role poison antidotes played in attempts to evaluate early modern cures – and in the development of early modern experiment more broadly. 

A Five College Renaissance Seminar

Prof. Brian Yellen (Dept. of Earth Geographic and Climate Sciences) journeys back in time through the Amethyst Brook Conservation Area to reveal the dynamism of watersheds and how waterways ‘downstream’ shape the landscapes and ecosystems where we live. Joined by poets, fiction writers, geologists, geographers, visual artists, and musicians, this workshop explores the long-histories of human and non-human engagements with water and its transforming power in the arts, industry, natural world, and cultural imaginations.

Please join us for the opening reception of Artist in Residence Susan Montgomery's exhibit of original work, 'Fatal Flora: Poisonous Revenge Narratives'.

Navigating the line between medicine and poison has always been tricky. Historically, women have transformed household botanicals into vital remedies and fatal toxics to shape the fate of their own lives. Fatal Flora: Poisonous Revenge Narratives asks how, in the hands of knowledgeable women, the natural world can be transformed from medicinal to murderous in a pinch, dash, or splash of ingredients. Artist in Residence, Susan Montgomery, blends history, memory, and the imagination on her canvases to recall real and mythical women who change their lives by harnessing the powers of the natural world.

Susan Montgomery teaches drawing in the Smith College Department of Art. She is a recipient of the Blanch E. Coleman Award, Mellon Foundation and a Sustainable Artist Foundation Grant. She has exhibited at venues including the Fuller Art and Craft Museum, Lyman Museum of Springfield History at the Springfield Quadrangle Museums, Five College Women’s Resource Center at Mount Holyoke College, Historic Northampton Museum, A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery and the Trustman Gallery at Simmons College.

An Elements talk

This talk from Marie Comuzzo (Brandeis University) centers on the transformational process that musicoscientists Roger and Katy Payne initiated when they heard humpback whales' vocalizations as song, and the rippling effect that their 1970 album Sounds of the Humpback Whales had on the environmental efforts to end whaling. Through an exploration of this album and the works of George Crumb, Emily Doolittle, Alan Hovhannes, and John Travener – composers who deeply listened to whales in real and imaginative ways – this talk reflects on how hearing, listening, and composing alongside whales, led to a dramatic transformation in the perception of the ocean, from an aphonic space to a rich, dynamic, and musical sonic environment. 

Faculty chamber music concert curated by Ayano Kataoka and Steven Beck, inspired by the exhibition "Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato" by Courtney M. Leonard at the University Museum of Contemporary Art.

Featuring Ayano Kataoka, percussion/marimba; Steven Beck, piano; Cobus du Toit, flute; Edward Arron, cello

Music by George Crumb: Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), Toru Takemitsu: Towards the Sea, Russell Wharton: Phylogenesis, Angelica Negron: Espacios, objetos, sonidos y tiempo and Luigi Nono: ...sofferte onde serene...

An Elements concert

Department of Music & Dance Listening Room

The Department of Music & Dance's Listening Room is a series organized by Jonathan Hulting-Cohen and Lindsay Pope. This event is hosted by Evan MacCarthy and will feature songs and instrumental works capturing images and echoes of seas, rivers, ice, and aquatic myths. In addition to a small selection of recorded excerpts, live musical performances will include Toru Takemitsu's Toward the Sea, Claude Debussy's "Reflets dans l'eau" from Images, series I, Claude Debussy's "Le tombeau des Naïades" from Chansons de Bilitis, and Franz Schubert's "Wohin?" from Die schöne Mullerin (D. 795). With performers Cobus du Toit, flute; William Hite, voice; Ayano Kataoka, marimba; Julia Ma, piano; Lindsay Pope, voice; Jingjing Wan, piano.

Please join us for the opening reception of Artist in Residence Brandon Graving's exhibit of original work, 'Elusive Prize: Wonder, Wing, & Transmutation'

Brandon Graving is a sculptor and printmaker and who often works on a very large scale, in mediums that include bronze, neon, paper, resins, steel and wood. She is also the owner and master printmaker at Gravity Press Experimental Print Shop which holds one of the largest platen presses in the world. Her work has been exhibited widely in museums, public, and private collections.

Visit here to learn more about her work.

Title: Y3K: Awakening 

4:30– Waking Up: A Jazz Performance by Eric Hofbauer / The Five Agents, based on the young climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered a speech at the UN Summit for Climate Action, in which she declared, “How dare you!” This will be accompanied by a dance performance by UMass Amherst Jazz Dance class taught by Lauren Cox. 

5:30– Ripple Effects: Reflections on Water in Story and Sound. Part of the multi-year arts and humanities project  Elements with Evan MacCarthy and Marjorie Rubright from The Renaissance of the Earth 

6:00– Landscape of Fear. Saxophonists Jonathan Hulting-Cohen and Pantelis Lykoudis perform Marcos Balter’s evocative and provocative work for two high instruments. 

6:30– Ghost Ensemble,   (contact: Ben Richter). Performing Miya Masaoka's Plant Life Recounted Here and Pauline Oliveros's In Consideration of the Earth. 

Acknowledgements: 

SES, RoE, Music and Dance, Architecture 

An Environmental Humanities talk by renowned interdisciplinary scholar Anne McClintock, whose scholarship explores the intersections of militarization, war and the Anthropocene, and engages deeply with questions of race, gender, sexualities, colonialism, and globalization.

An art talk by artist Siobhán MacDonald, whose award-winning works respond to the climate crisis by capturing tipping points and robustly engaging with climate science.