Coastal Humanities: Geographies of Abundance and Repair

Core Faculty

Nik Heynen, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Geography; Visiting Scholar, Spelman College; Co-Director, UGA’s Cornelia Walker Bailey Program on Land, Sea, and Agriculture

Description

As coastal communities continue to experience the consequences of land loss to development and sea level rise, many of them are seeking novel solutions and new partnerships to mitigate these threats and build resiliency. As part of this, they are working to document their own cultural ecosystems in ways that point forward to resilience and emancipation.

Coastal humanities offer ways of seeing geographies of abundance and repair through the cultural practices and traditions of reciprocity, sharing, and collaboration. Such a framing of “abundance” versus “marginalization” is in line with important humanities-based efforts to uplift the narratives and stories, as well as material conditions, of communities historically considered primarily through their deficits.

All of these efforts coming together through the Willson Center’s new Coastal Humanities research cluster will highlight the intersections of social science and humanities research and education being done on the Georgia coast through close partnerships anchored by UGA’s Cornelia Walker Bailey Program on Land, Sea and Agriculture and the UGA-based internship program of the Athens’ oyster shell recycling nonprofit organization Shell to Shore.