EH Blog

After nine years of leadership, Dr. Jeffrey McCarthy is officially retiring from his position as Director of the Environmental Humanities Program. Jeff assumed directorship of the Program in 2014. Since then, he has successfully graduated nearly 70 students and placed many of them in PhD programs, professional programs, non-profit leadership roles, and Fulbright program; created the Utah Award in the Environmental Humanities to celebrate environmental leadership and expression; organized two leadership symposia for regional Environmental Humanities academic leaders; encouraged vigorous relationships with U of U research organizations like Taft-Nicholson Center and Bonderman Field Station at Rio Mesa; hired new faculty members including Lizzie Callaway, Diana Leong and Angela Robinson; organized the Environmental Humanities Research Interest Group on campus; and most recently is the recipient of a Mellon Foundation grant that created an Environmental Humanities Community Fellows Program to promote environmental justice and all the while, published three books.

Professor Danielle Endres will officially be the new director of the Environmental Humanities Program! After many years as director, Jeffrey McCarthy is retiring from the position and his term will end in June. We are grateful for Jeff's years of commitment to the Program, and we look forward to a new chapter with Danielle as our next leader. Danielle has been an affiliated faculty member with our program since its beginning, so she brings both fresh eyes and a deep understanding of our history and evolution.

Taylor Brorby is the current Annie Clark Annie Clark Tanner Teaching & Research Fellow in Environmental Humanities. He is the author of Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land, Crude: Poems, Coming Alive: Action and Civil Disobedience, and co-editor of Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Book Critics Circle, the MacDowell Colony, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Mesa Refuge, Blue Mountain Center, and the North Dakota Humanities Council.

Celebrate Pride Week by joining Taylor Brorby, Annie Clark Tanner Fellow in Environmental Humanities for a reading and discussion of his memoir, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, on March 29 at 4p in the Jewel Box (CTIHB 145). Refreshments provided.

Tessa has worked in the field of environmental education with organizations such as Summit Land Conservancy and Conserve Utah Valley to help spread awareness and appreciation for the natural world. Tessa’s research in the Environmental Humanities focuses on environmental education as a method of fostering resiliency and connection in the face of climate change. Tessa’s thesis work combines accessible, digital education and experiential learning methods to encourage emotional resiliency and place-based sensory connection as a way to understand and confront eco-anxiety and climate grief.