The Canopy, PPEH's Environmental Humanities Podcast
The Canopy is an environmental humanities podcast from the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities! Our episode’s segments include:
- Spotlights on EH at Penn and the Philadelphia Region: New and outstanding work in EH, at Penn and beyond: books, major websites, courses, new publications, and more
- Philadelphia Community series: Interviews with community experts, artists, educators, activists, and more
- Global Voices Interview series: “Environmental Humanities: What is it good for?”
- Student Spotlight: We will hear new voices in EH with this student-driven segment
The Canopy’s Managing Producer is Campbell Knobloch (camkno@sas.upenn.edu). Be in touch if you have an idea for a podcast segment and with other queries!
You can listen and subscribe at Spotify, Google, Apple!
EJ PHILLY, EPISODE 3: LIVING ON THE FENCELINE
This episode of EJ Philly explores the legacy of the PES refinery, one of the oldest crude oil processing centers located on the East Coast of the United States. For this segment, we talk to community members and local advocates in Philadelphia. We hear their experiences of residing next to a refinery that has historically had broad impacts on the everyday lives and health of local community members, living on the fence line. We also hear about their hopes for a more just future in the aftermath of the refinery closure in 2019.
EJ PHILLY, EPISODE 2: GARDENING UNDER PRECARITY
This episode of EJ Philly features a conversation with members of the Novick Urban Farm and Southeast Asian community in Philadelphia. Farm Manager Clara Varadi-True, Assistant Erin Dorsey, and community farmers Naw Doh, Hser Ku, and Wah Paw walk us through the challenges of farming in cities, the struggle for land in Philadelphia, and the power of building community through food – all over a home-cooked Burmese meal.
EJ PHILLY, EPISODE 1: FEELING THE HEAT
This episode of EJ Philly focuses on how climate change and inequality affect the creation of heat islands in urban spaces. We hear from multiple perspectives – a physician researching heat’s effect on health, a program manager impacting policy in the city’s Office of Sustainability, and community leaders and activists confronting heat islands. Through these conversations, we hope listeners come away with an understanding of how the built environment impacts extreme heat, its inequitable impacts on different communities, and current approaches to cool down the city’s neighborhoods.
EPISODE 5: ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN ACADEMIA
In this episode, Penn undergraduate student and Environmental Humanities minor Yamila Frej interviews PPEH 2022-2023 Public Pedagogies Fellow Jane Robbins Mize. They discuss the importance of public engagement in environmental justice at universities, where scholarship has historically excluded our most vulnerable community members. Jane Robbins illuminates how academics—both students and scholars—can ensure that their work makes meaningful contributions to justice movements outside the university walls. They draw on examples of public engagement from the 2023 spring course “Remediating the Environment,” which Jane Robbins taught and Yamila took, as well as environmental justice activism on Penn's campus. Listen to get inspired and take action!
EPISODE 4: LANDSCAPES + INFRASTRUCTURES
This episode of The Canopy features two conversations on two distinct topics. The first, with Dr. Dan Grimley, Head of Division for the Humanities at Oxford University, continues our series of conversations about environmental justice between students at the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities and partners in the International Doctoral Cluster for Environmental Humanities at Oxford and the University of Toronto. The second segment features our very own Rahul Mukherjee who talks about his book, Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Culture, now out with Duke University Press. Here, Rahul considers how “cultures of uncertainty” permeate contemporary discussions of environmental and public health.
EPISODE 3: RESISTING EXTRACTION
This episode of The Canopy features four environmental humanists in two transatlantic conversations. They consider how the environmental humanities can make work for environmental justice and consider how university-based researchers might–and in some cases do–make work that resists extractive logics.
Spotify, Google, Apple
EPISODE 2: SCALES / TALES of DISASTER
This episode presents stories of “un-natural” natural disasters including super storms and of the increasingly “everyday” disasters of ongoing climate change–like flooded basements or high school buildings too hot for learning. You’ll hear lively student voices and learn from academic researchers and community partners who are vitally important to the socially engaged work we make at PPEH.
EPISODE 1: STORIED BALTIMORE
In this first episode of The Canopy, a new podcast from UPenn’s Program in Environmental Humanities, we hear an early pandemic conversation with Dr. Sheri Parks of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), who shares her expertise and perspectives on the rich stories and environmental knowledge of Baltimore, MD as told through relationships, beauty, and resilience of community and place.