Humanities: Land Sea Space (HLSS) is a transdisciplinary research initiative which explores a range of environmental issues and challenges by applying humanistic methods of scholarship. In the spirit of the Glasscock Center’s mission to foster interdisciplinary humanities research among the community of scholars at Texas A&M University and in the world beyond the academy, HLSS aims to benefit and impact a broad intellectual community and to have significant reach by exploring both global concerns and many that are especially relevant to the state of Texas. The Glasscock Center launched HLSS in 2018, and programming explored topics such as oceans and seas in 2019 and the plant humanities in 2021. Considering Texas A&M’s new designation as a Hispanic Serving Institute (HSI) HLSS programming in 2022 and 2023 focused on the relationship between space and place in Latinx and Latin American environmentalisms.
Humanities and social science scholars have long-studied land, but recent catastrophic changes through global warming have shifted many discussions, raising geopolitical, environmental, and social justice issues. New transdisciplinary work has emerged which addresses diverse topics such as water and food insecurity, energy cultures, coastal and island communities, the Anthropocene, deep time, extinctions, and ecological loss. Literature and the arts are motivating creative and imaginative work which explores nature-society interactions. The critical methods of the humanities, in conversation with the social and natural sciences, are needed to properly address such topics. This Glasscock Center Initiative provides scope for innovative research across the environmental humanities, marine humanities, geohumanities, planetary humanities, energy humanities, health humanities, and public humanities. As reflected by the earth’s systems and ecologies, the triple themes of Land Sea Space are approached individually but also as interconnected.
Created by Emily Brady, the Center’s former director, the initiative is convened by Dr. AJ Baginski.
