Schedule & Course Readings

Orientation, Introductions, and the New York Botanical Garden as a Site of Human and Non-Human History

Guiding Questions:

• What drew participants to the workshop? What are their current research projects and educational backgrounds, and how do they intend to benefit from the program?
• Why is the New York Botanical Garden a relevant natural and cultural landscape?
• How can human and non-human histories of place be integrated? Why is this necessary?
• What can humanists learn from scientists to better understand the landscape as an object of study?

Readings:

Excerpts from The New York Botanical Garden Cultural Landscape Report; excerpts from Eric W. Sanderson’s Mannahatta; excerpts from Evan T. Pritchard’s The Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York; excerpts from Stephen Jenkin’s The Story of the Bronx.

The first day of our workshop will begin with introductions by participants facilitated by project director Dr. Lucas Mertehikian in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library Reading Room, where the Humanities Institute is based. Over breakfast, participants will give three-minute presentations explaining their research interests and what they expect to gain from the workshop.

After breakfast and introductions, participants will tour the Mertz Library, guided by its director, Rhonda Evans, MLS/JD, who will speak about the library’s history and mission since its foundation in 1899 and its current global role in helping scientists and humanists study and protect nature. She will also introduce participants to the Mertz Library’s physical and digital resources and provide an overview of how to access them.

After a break, Dr. Eric W. Sanderson will give an inaugural lecture on the ecological history of NYBG. The lecture will introduce both the main environmental features of the site, which will be explored in different ways during the week, and the principles of landscape ecology as a discipline. Following Sanderson’s talk, Evan T. Pritchard, author of Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York, will give a presentation on the Lenape history of the site, followed by a walking tour of the Thain Family Forest. In these talks and tours, as throughout the rest of the workshop, participants will have the opportunity to observe how academic disciplines understand the history of landscape differently and how they can work together.

The day will end with a walking tour of the Thain Family Forest on the New York Botanical Garden’s grounds, led by Pritchard. The forest comprises nearly 50 acres and consists of five canopy types, including oak, hemlock, beech, sweet gum, and mixed trees, with the Aquehung (Bronx) River traversing the forest’s eastern edge. The tour will emphasize three aspects: 1) the natural features of the forest; 2) how it was altered by human design since the 1800s; and 3) the cultural relevance to the Lenape culture of certain tree species in the forest, focusing on Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

Rocks Talk: The Geological History of the New York Botanical Garden

Guiding Questions:

• What information can rocks give us about the deep history of the places we inhabit and research? How can we read them?
• What are the most salient rocks of the New York Botanical Garden?
• How do geology and notions of deep time inform human history and the environmental humanities?
• How can geologists and humanists collaborate to understand place-based histories better? 

Readings:

Excerpts from Jan Zalasiewicz’s How to Read a Rock; excerpts from Dipesh Chakrabarty’s The Climate of History; excerpts from Kathryn Yussof’s A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None; Arthur Hollick’s “Pot-Holes in the New York Botanical Garden” (Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, Vol. XIV, No. 165, September 1913); photographs from NYBG’s institutional archives.

Day 2 will begin with a walking tour of the NYBG grounds led by geologist Dr. Klaus H. Jacob, joined by Dr. Eric W. Sanderon, focusing on the most notorious rocks of the Garden and the thousands of-year-old stories they tell about the landscape. As noted in many institutional records, the area’s geology was one of the main reasons why the Garden was established in what used to be the Bronx Park, with its varying topography that includes many rock outcrops, rolling hills, and steep slopes.

A world-leading expert on disaster risk management and climate change, Jacob is a professor at Columbia University and has served on the Mayor’s New York City Panel on Climate Change from 2008 to 2019. During this tour, he and Sanderson will present key notions of geology to a non-specialized audience. They will explain how rocks are one of the fundamental aspects that define what a place looks like ––and what it might look like in the future––, with specific attention to NYBG’s climate and geomorphic features. Moreover, Jacob will suggest how participants might seek collaborations with geology experts in their home institutions to foster their research projects. Participants will also have access to NYBG’s library holdings that document changes in the geological landscape during the past century, such as Arthur Hollic’s essay “Pot-Holes in the New York Botanical Garden” and historical photographs.

After lunch, participants will attend a talk by Dr. Mertehikian on the geological implications of anthropogenic climate change in the practice of the humanities. Special emphasis will be made on what it means for humanists to consider the deep history and planetary scales in their own research projects. Drawing from the work of key authors in the environmental humanities, such as Dipesh Chakrabarty and Kathryn Yusoff, the talk will also examine how inhuman and nonorganic dimensions of life impact how we understand issues such as fossil fuels, race, and matter. The goal is to present participants with a more speculative and theoretical way of thinking about how human and non-human histories of place are intertwined.

After the talk, NYBG’s Vice President of Horticulture, Todd Forrest, will lead an Enid A. Haud Conservatory tour. Forrest will highlight the history of the collection (including its colonial implications), its horticultural relevance, and its research potential to counter climate change and biodiversity loss.

After the tour, participants will have time to independently explore NYBG’s institutional archives. Finally, to end the day, Dr. Mertehikian will facilitate a discussion where participants will explain how they think what they learned during the day might translate into concrete research opportunities in their own projects. Moreover, participants will be invited to reflect on the topology of their places of study and to suggest ways in which they could connect with scholars in other fields, both in the sciences and in the humanities, in an informative way. Dr. Mertehikian will also create a collective document on the workshop Canvas website where participants can share digital resources that speak to the topic of the day to create a sense of intellectual community among participants beyond the workshop’s scope.

Reading the Land in the Archives (I): Rare Books and Historical Maps

Guiding Questions:

• What kind of place-based information can non-expert humanists extract from historical maps?
• Where can scholars find helpful maps for their research in physical archives and online databases?
• What basic mapping skills can humanities professionals with no coding background develop?

Readings:

Excerpts from Daniela Bleichmar’s Visible Empire; Eric Sanderson, Chapter 2 (“A Map Found”) of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City); Chapter 1 (“Origins, 1883 to 1896”) of The New York Botanical Garden Cultural Landscape Report; excerpts from Kathleen A. Brosnan and James R. Akerman’s Mapping Nature across the Americas; New York Public Library’s “How to Read a Map.”

Day 3 will introduce the first of two sessions dedicated to using biocultural collections, archives, and library holdings to read nature and land history. The first day will focus on rare books (with an emphasis on botanical illustrations), and maps (especially historical maps) read from the perspectives of both librarians and ecologists. The second day will focus on NYBG’s herbarium collection, the largest in the world.

Wednesday will begin with a tour of the Mertz Library’s Rare Books Room, led by Rare Book Curator Stephen Sinon. Sinon will highlight some of NYBG’s rarest holdings as they speak to how botanists have worked with artists to document biodiversity from the 16th century onwards. Sinon will address questions of visual epistemology (how and why plant species were visually represented following different patterns), printing and coloring techniques (how large-scale images of plants were produced and how extreme levels of detail were achieved), and how helpful these illustrations can be today in documenting the biodiversity of a specific locality. Case studies will include precious copies of large-scale floras such as Joseph Banks’ Florilegium (1771-1784) and Etienne Denisse’s Flore d’ Amérique (1843-1846). Additionally, this session will introduce participants to valuable online research databases such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library, iDigBio, and the Global Biodiversity Facility so they can integrate them into their future research and teaching.

After Sinon’s tour of the Rare Books Room, participants will attend a talk by Curator and Geospatial Librarian Ian Fowler. Fowler is responsible for the care and development of the cartographic collections and for using new geospatial technologies and applications for education. In his talk, he will offer basic guidelines for how to read maps without being a cartography expert. He will also share examples of recent projects using NYBG and NYPL holdings that have been successful in higher education.

In the afternoon, using a historical map of NYBG, environmental historian Lucinda Royte will introduce participants to GIS (geographic information system), that is, how a map is constructed through spatial features and an attribute database of numbers or words linked to the features on the map. This session will also include a practical demonstration using NYBG’s mapping lab. The goal is that participants will understand how mapping projects can be conceived and what skills they should develop to carry them out independently––and alternatively, how to recruit potential research partners. Participants will also be encouraged to bring examples of maps they would like to study more in-depth to collect feedback from Royte.

Toward the end of the day, participants will have time to work on their own experiential learning activities. Dr. Mertehikian will also be available to discuss participants’ final projects one-on-one and further reflect on using rare books and historical maps in their teaching and research.

Reading the Land in the Archives (II): Biodiversity in the Herbarium

Guiding Questions:

• What is the role of herbaria in preserving biodiversity and tracking climate change?
• What can humanities scholars learn from herbaria? What are some potential research uses in documenting a specific place’s living species and history?
• How can anyone create their own herbarium specimens?

Readings:

Excerpts from Maura Flannery’s In the Herbarium; excerpts from Brian Ogilvie’s The Science of Describing; excerpts from Evelyn Gonzalez’s The Bronx.

Day 4 will continue to examine some of the New York Botanical Garden’s most salient biocultural collections, including a display of valuable botanical illustrations held in the Rare Book Room of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library and an exploration of the holdings of the William & Lynda Steere Herbarium.

Immediately after lunch, Dr. Emily Sessa, Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, will lead a tour of the herbarium. The tour will feature significant historical specimens collected by botanists such as Charles Darwin and John Torrey and will address both scientific and humanistic uses of the herbarium. In her section of the tour, Dr. Sessa will highlight the research value of historical and contemporary herbarium specimens in documenting and preserving biodiversity, especially today, in the face of climate change.

After the tour, Dr. Ashanti Shih, Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College and former Humanities Institute fellow, will lecture on the curatorial challenges that come from researching and managing a collection that is underwritten by colonial violence and stories of land appropriation and how scholars can work with archival materials and community stakeholders to remediate this. With approximately 7,800,000 specimens (47% of which have been digitized), the Steere Herbarium is one of the largest of its kind in the world, and it holds enormous value in fighting climate change and reimagining how we document and tell the history of the land.

In the afternoon, participants will visit New Roots Community Farm in the Bronx, where they will participate in a hands-on workshop coordinated by Dr. Matthew Pace, Assistant Curator of the Steere Herbarium, Audrey Jenkins, a Ph.D. candidate in Urban Policy at the New School and former Humanities Institute fellow, and Sheryll Durrant, Bronx-based community organizer and urban farmer. Participants will learn how to press plant specimens for preservation and address the importance of documenting the biodiversity of community gardens. Durrant, a long-time facilitator of New Roots, will also speak to the social history of the garden, as well as their role in securing food justice in the Bronx, which has the highest food insecurity rate in New York City. Upon their return to NYBG, participants can either work on their final projects or share their experiences of the day.

The History and the Future of Water: The Case of the Aquehung (Bronx) River

Guiding Questions:

• How do rivers shape landscapes throughout deep time? What is the history of the Aquahong (Bronx) River?
• How did Indigenous communities interact with the river? How has human action affected the rivers and the associated ecosystems since colonization?
• How can this impact be remediated, and how can the humanities scholars and professionals contribute to this change?

Readings:

Michael H. Finewood et al., “The Bronx River and Environmental Justice Through the Lens of a Watershed” (Case Studies in the Environment, 7[1]: 182494); excerpts from Stephen Paul Devillo’s The Bronx River in History and Folklore; excerpts from Serpil Oppermann’s Blue Humanities: Storied Waterscapes in the Anthropocene.

Friday will begin with a joint talk by Lucinda Royte and Lucas Mertehikian on the ecological history of the Aquehung (Bronx) River and recent approaches in the humanities to the notion of “Blue Humanities,” that is, how the humanities can tell the stories of waterscapes and account for their cultural relevance. After the talk, participants will walk through the river through the heart of the Bronx, including the Bronx River Forest, the New York Botanical Garden, and part of the Bronx Zoo into the Bronx River Estuary.

The walking tour will be led by Todd Forrest, who has worked extensively on restoration projects to preserve the river’s rich watershed, accompanied by environmental historian Lucynda Royte. During the tour, participants will learn about water testing methods, collecting accurate scientific data to determine the river’s health, and monitoring the wild oyster populations that help restore water quality, contributing to the river’s overall health.

After the walk, participants will share their experiences and reflect on the most salient points of the tour. Emphasis will be made on the experience of traversing the city following the river’s course and noticing how human and non-human interactions have shaped the environment over time.

Final Presentations by Participants

Guiding Questions:

• What have participants learned about integrating ecological knowledge and practical skills into their humanistic research and teaching during the program?
• What key concepts from the environmental humanities will benefit their place-based projects?
• What experiential learning activity do they envision for their students and research projects?

During the last day of the program, participants will be first divided into smaller groups for a structured discussion of what they gained from the program and how they think it will be helpful in their future research and teaching. Then, they will do three- to five-minute presentations on an experiential learning activity of their design, drawing from the workshop and focusing on their place-based projects. The presentation should include a summary of the overall research project, a description of the designed activity, its intended audience, learning objectives, and potential challenges to carry it to fruition (including, for example, budget constraints and identifying partners or collaborators). The designed activities should be interdisciplinary and appeal to students with different backgrounds when possible.

Before their departure, participants will be asked to provide written feedback in the form of an anonymous evaluation on what improvements they think the program could make, including different learning activities, topics, readings, and general instruction. The project leader will collect and analyze the feedback across various NYBG departments.

After completion of the workshops, the project director will communicate with participants through Canvas to hold a mandatory virtual meeting where participants will comment on the further development of their final projects and, when possible, share their experiences implementing them in their home institutions. They will also be asked to share their lesson plans, which will be uploaded to the workshop website. NYBG’s digital infrastructure will ensure the project’s sustainability over time and provide the basis for future conversations among participants beyond the workshops.