Joni Adamson is President's Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Department of English and Director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative (EHI) at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. She writes on the centrality of the environmental humanities to the sustainability sciences, the design of desirable futures, climate fiction and film, Indigenous literatures and scientific literacies, the rights of nature movement, and the food justice movement. Her research has been supported by many awards and grants, including the 2019 Benjamin N. Duke Fellowship at the National Humanities Center.
She is the author and/or co-editor of eight books and special issues and 80 articles, chapters, reviews and blog posts which have been widely cited, reprinted, and translated into Mandarin and Spanish. She has been invited to keynote conferences and has lectured in Australia, China, England, Italy, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and throughout the U.S. Her organizational activities helped lay the foundations for transnational environmental American Studies and the environmental humanities. From 1998 to 2011, she founded and led the Environment and Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association (ASA-ECC) and, in 2012, she was elected president of the Association for the Study Literature and Environment (ASLE), the largest organization of environmental humanists in the world. She is currently Director of the North American Observatory (NAO) which is headquartered at ASU and part of the Humanities for the Environment global network which she helped to launch in 2013 with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Adamson directs the Environmental Humanities certificate at ASU and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses that explore environmental literature and film, environmental justice, global indigenous oral and written literatures, the rights of nature movement, and food studies. She is a dedicated teacher and, in 2014, was awarded the ASU Faculty Women's Association Mentorship Award.
Joni Adamson, Director and founding Convener, North American Observatory of the Humanities for the Environment global network and lead developer of its international website. Please visit our website!
BOOKS AND SPECIAL ISSUES
American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism: The Middle Place. (2001).
Co-edited volume, with Mei Mei Evans and Rachel Stein. Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics, and Pedagogy. (2002).
Special Co-Guest - edited issue, with Scott Slovic. "Ethnicity and Ecocriticism." MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the US (2009).
Co-edited volume, with Kimberly N. Ruffin, American Studies, Ecocriticism, and Ecology: Thinking and Acting in the Local and Global Commons. Routledge, 2013.
Co-edited volume, Keywords for Environmental Studies. Joni Adamson, William A. Gleason and David N. Pellow, eds. New York University Press, 2016.
Co-edited volume. With Salma Monani. Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos. Routledge, 2016.
Co-edited volume. With Michael Davis. Humanities for the Environment (HfE): Integrating Knowledge, Forging New Constellations of Practice. Environmental Humanities Series, Iain McCalman and Libby Robin, Eds. New York and London: Routledge, 2017.
Guest Edited Special Issue, “The Green Humanities Lab: The Ecological and Digital Humanities (EcoDH),” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 5.2 (Spring 2018). pp. 211.
ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS
“Citizen Humanities: Teaching ‘Life Overlooked’ as Interdisciplinary Ecology,” Co-authored by Joni Adamson, Stephanie LeMenager, Catriona Sandilands, Special Issue, “The Green Humanities Lab,” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, Joni Adamson, Guest Ed. 5.2 (Spring 2018), 96-121.
“Las Humanidades Ambientales Globales: Ampliando la Conversación, Imaginando Futuros Alternativos,” in Humanidades Ambientales. Pensamiento, arte y relatos para el Siglo de la Gran Prueba (Environmental Humanitites: Thought, Art and Stories in the Century of the Great Challenge), Trans. Alejandro Rivero-Vadillo, Eds. José Albeda, José María Parreño Velasco, J.M. Marrero Henríquez. Madrid: Los Libros de Catarata, 2018. 15-33.
“Roots and Trajectories in the Environmental Humanities: From Environmental Justice to Intergenerational Justice.” English Language Notes (ELN). 55.1-2 (Summer/Fall 2017): 121-134.
“Insinuations: Thinking Plant Capacities and Politics with The Day of the Triffids.” Co- authored with Catriona Sandilands. The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy, Literature and Cinema. Eds. Patricia Vieira, Monica Gagliano and John Ryan. University of Minnesota Press, 2017. 234-252.
“Networking Networks and Constellating New Practices in the Environmental Humanities,” PMLA 131.2 (March): 2016, 347–355.
Holm, P.; Adamson, J.; et al. “Humanities for the Environment—A Manifesto for Research and Action.” Humanities. 4.4 (December 2015): 977-992. http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/4/4/977 .
“Introduction,” with William Gleason and David N. Pellow, co-authors, for Keywords for Environmental Studies. New York University Press, 2015. 1-5.
“Humanities.” for Keywords for Environmental Studies. New York University Press, 2015. 135-139.
“The Ancient Future: Diasporic Residency and Food-based Knowledges in the Work of American Indigenous and Pacific Austronesian Writers.” Special Issue: “Migrants and their Memories.” Guest Co-Eds. K.T. Tee, Ayeling Wang and I-Chun Wang. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature. 42.1 (March 2015): 5-17.
Joni Adamson and David Naguib Pellow. “Engaged Scholarship in the Vernacular Landscape: A Conversation,” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities. Inaugural Issue. (April 2013). DOI: 10.5250/resilience.1.1.27; Stable URL http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/resilience.1.1.27.
“Working Wilderness: Ranching, Proprietary Rights to Nature, Environmental Justice and Climate Change,” Working on Earth: Class Studies and Environmental Justice. Eds. Christine Robertson and Jennifer Westerman. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2015. 197-218.
“Source of Life: Avatar, Amazonia, and an Ecology of Selves,” Material Ecocriticism. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Opperman, eds. Bloomington, IN: U of Indiana P, 2014. 253-268.
“Cosmovisions: Environmental Justice, Transnational American Studies and Indigenous Literature,” The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism. Greg Gerrard, Ed. New York and Oxford, UK: Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, 2014. 172-187.
“Indigenous Cosmopolitics and the Re-Emergence of the Pluriverse.” Howling For Justice: Critical Perspectives on Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead. Ed. Rebecca Tillett. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2014. 181-194.
“Foreword.” For Asian American Literature and the Environment. Lorna Fitzsimmons, Youngsuk Chae, and Bella Adams, Eds. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2014. ix-xvi.
“Introduction.” With Kimberly N. Ruffin. American Studies, Ecocriticism, and Ecology: Thinking and Acting in the Local and Global Commons. Joni Adamson and Kimberly Ruffin, Co-Editors. Routledge, 2013. 1-17.
"`¡Todos Somos Indios!’" Revolutionary Imagination, Alternative Modernity, and Transnational Organizing in the Work of Silko, Tamez and Anzaldúa.". The Journal of Transnational American Studies (2012).
"Indigenous Literatures, Multinaturalism, and Avatar: The Emergence of Indigenous Cosmopolitics.". American Literary History (ALH) Special Issue: Sustainability in America (2012)
"Whale as Cosmos: Multi-species Ethnography and Contemporary Indigenous Cosmopolitics.". Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses (2012).
"Seeking the Corn Mother: Transnational Indigenous Community Building and Organizing, Food Sovereignty and Native Literary Studies". We the Peoples: Indigenous Rights in the Age of the Declaration (2012).
"‘Spiky Green Life’: Environmental, Food and Sexual Justice Themes in Sapphire’s PUSH". Sapphire’s Literary Breakthrough: Feminist Pedagogies, Erotic Literacies, Environmental Justice Perspectives, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 69-88.
"Medicine Food: Critical Environmental Justice Studies, Native North American Literature and the Movement for Food Sovereignty.". Environmental Justice (2011).
"American Literature and Film from a Planetary Perspective: Teaching Space, Time and Scale.". The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy (2010).
"Literature and Environment Studies and the Influence of the Environmental Justice Movement". A Companion to American Literature and Culture (2010).
"Coming Home to Eat: Re-imagining Place in the Age of Global Climate Change.". Tamkang Review (2009).
Joni Adamson and Scott Slovic. "The Shoulders We Stand On: An Introduction to Ethnicity and Ecocriticism". MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the US (2009).
"What Winning Looks Like: Critical Environmental Justice Studies and the Future of a Movement." Rev. of Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement. Eds. David Naguib Pellow and Robert J. Brulle. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006 and Steve Lerner, Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005. (2007).
Campaign for a Just Transition. Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States (ELLUS) (2005).
Teresa Leal. Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States (ELLUS) (2005).
The Challenge of Speaking First: A Tribute to Simon Ortiz. Studies in American Indian Literatures (2004).
Teaching American Indian Literature: Oral Tradition and Sense of Place. Arizona English Bulletin (2002).
"Encounter with a Mexican Jaguar: Nature, NAFTA, Militarization and Ranching in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.". Globalization on the Line: Culture, Capital, and Citizenship at U.S. Borders (2002).
The Truth is We Live on Dry Land': Language as Homeland in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine. Letterature d'America (1992).
Joni Adamson (ASU), George Adamson (Kings College London) Thom Van Dooren (University of New South Wales), PLuS Alliance, ($54,000, Internal-External from Kings, UNSW, and ASU, funded, 2017-2019)
“DRYLANDS: European Understandings of Dry Urban Landscapes Under Climate Change Perceptions and Adaptations” H2020-MSCA-2017 EJD 766289, European Commission—Horizons 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme, (2017-2018, € 3,107,036.16, not funded).
Rimjhim Aggarwal, Netra Chhetri, Joni Adamson, et al. “Changing the Trajectory of Rice-based Cultures Towards Sustainability," Proposal to the MacArthur 100 million and Change grant competition, Recognized as a “Top 200” proposal by the MacArthur Foundation, one of four ASU KED Blue-Ribboned Proposals, (2016, not funded).
| Spring 2020 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 367 | Environmental Literature&Film |
| ENG 636 | Advanced Studies American Lit |
| Fall 2018 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 367 | Environmental Literature&Film |
| ENG 378 | Environmental Creative Nonfict |
| SOS 792 | Research |
| Spring 2018 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 367 | Environmental Literature&Film |
| ENG 468 | Environmntl Literary Criticism |
| Fall 2017 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 367 | Environmental Literature&Film |
| ENG 378 | Environmental Creative Nonfict |
| Spring 2017 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 334 | Am Southwest Literature & Film |
| ENG 367 | Environmental Literature&Film |
| Spring 2016 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 591 | Seminar |
| Fall 2015 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 468 | Environmntl Literary Criticism |
Keynote. “We Have Never Been “Anthropos”: From Environmental Justice to Cosmopolitics.” "Nation in the Age of Environmental Crisis", Ecocriticism Network Symposium, Augsburg, Germany, July 17-18, 2015.
Lecture. “Life Overlooked: Humanities for the Environment,” Woodin Environmental Studies Colloquium, The Franklin Environmental Center, Middlebury College, Middlebury Vermont, March 12, 2015.
Keynote. The Sixth International Conference in Ecodiscourse: Speculative Materialisms. “Toward a Future We Want: Material Ecocriticism and the Articulation of “Storied Matter (s),” Tamkang University, Taipei, Taiwan, December 19, 2014.
Lecture. “Networked Relations: Humanities for the Environment.” Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Xiamen University, Fujian Province, China. December 16, 2014.
Presentation. “Corn Mothers and Sunflowers: Critical Plant Studies, Multinatural Beings, and Cosmopolitics.” “The Environmental Humanities: Emergence and Impact,” Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar, University of California, Los Angeles, December 9, 2014.
HfE Lecture. “Humanities for the Environment: Articulating `Storied Matter’ in the Multiverse.” The Annual Meeting of the Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI): Performative Humanities. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, June 5-8, 2014.
Keynote, “Gardens in the Desert: Migration, Diaspora and Food Sovereignty in the Work of Global Indigenous Women Writers,” International Migrants and Their Memories Conference,” National Sun-yat Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, October 5, 2013.
Lecture, “A Keyword for Environmental Studies: Imagination,” “Environmental Humanities in a Changing World,” Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University, March 8-9, 2013.
2019 Benjamin N. Duke National Humanities Center Senior Fellowship (External $35,000)
2017-2019 - PLuS Alliance Fellowship, PLuS Alliance, Arizona State University | Kings College London | University of New South Wales ($10,000)
2016-2017 - Virginia G. Piper Fellowship, Virginia G. Piper Center, Arizona State University, (Internal $15,000)
2016 - CLAS Humanities Research Incentive Award, (Internal $1,000)
2015 - NEH Guest Faculty. “The Environmental Humanities.” Imagining Sustainable Environments: Place and Culture in the Global Community. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Humanities Institute. Virginia State University, May 18-22, 2015. (External)
2014 - ASU Faculty Women’s Association Outstanding Mentor Award
2012 - Visiting Scholar Fellowship, University of Alcalá, Alcalá, Spain, to work with members of GIECO (Grupo de Investigación en Ecocrítica) at the Instituto de Investigación en Estudios Norteamericano, June 22-July 18, (External $2000)
2012 - Sabbatical Leave, Arizona State University, 7/2012—12/2012 (Internal)
2011 - NEH Guest Faculty, “What are the Environmental Humanities?” Rethinking the Land Ethic: Sustainability and the Humanities National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Institute, Flagstaff, AZ. (External)
2010-11 - Fellowship, The Humanities and Human Origins, Institute for Humanities Research, Arizona State University, (Internal $8000)
2009 - National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Stipend, "Nature and History at the Nation's Edge: A Field Institute in Environmental and Borderlands History," Tucson, AZ, June 14-July 11, (External $3200)
2009-2010 - Fellowship, Lincoln Polytechnic Ethics Seminar, Arizona State University, (Internal $4000)
Book Series Editor, New Developments in Sustainability and Society, Cambridge University Press, 2017- https://www.cambridge.org/core/series/new-directions-in-sustainability- and-society/195109EF9FE8DC76EF7071B17D0F7341
Co-editor, with Scott Slovic and Masumi Yuki, Routledge Environmental Humanities Book Series, https://www.routledge.com/sustainability/series/REH
Editorial Board Member, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, 2005-
Editorial Board Member, Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2011-
Editorial Board Member, Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series, Lexington Books, an academic imprint of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2013-
Editorial Board Member, Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, 2013-
Editorial Board Member, transFORMATIONS, 2014-
Editorial Board Associate, Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities, 2014-
American Studies Association American Society of Environmental History The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment The Modern Language Association MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States Environment and Culture Caucus, American Studies Association Diversity Caucus, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Western Literature Association
2009-present Senior Sustainability Scholar, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute for Sustainability 2014-present Inaugural Affiliate, Virginia Piper Center for Creative Writing 2015-present Affiliate, School for the Future of Innovation in Society 2014-present Affiliate, American Studies MA Program, SHPRS 2014-present Affiliated Faculty, Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability 2013-present Program Faculty, Graduate Certificate of Nonfiction Writing 2009-present Affiliated Faculty, Women and Gender Studies
2013- Professor, English and Environmental Humanities, CLAS, Arizona State University 2006-2013 Associate Professor, English and Environmental Humanities, IHC, Arizona State University 2004-2006 Professor, English, University of Arizona, Sierra Vista 2001-2004 Associate Professor, English, University of Arizona, Sierra Vista 1996-2001 Assistant Professor, English, University of Arizona, Sierra Vista 1995-1996 Adjunct Senior Lecturer, English, University of Arizona, Tucson 1992-1995 Graduate Associate, English, University of Arizona, Tucson 1989-1992 Graduate Assistant, English, University of Arizona, Tucson
Book Manuscript Reviewer Cambridge University Press; Continuum Books; Duke University Press; HarperCollins; Lexington Books; MIT Press; New York University Press; Oxford University Press; Routledge Press; Palgrave MacMillan Press; University of Arizona Press; University of Chicago Press; University of Georgia Press; University of Kansas Press; University of Nevada Press; University of Virginia Press; Wilfred Laurier University Press
Journal Article Reviewer: Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literatures, Culture, and Theory; Concentric; Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment; Elohi: Indigenous Peoples and the Environment; Environmental Ethics; Environmental Humanities; Environmental Justice; Hypatia; ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment; Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies; Journal of Transnational American Studies; Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture; Environmental Humanities; LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory; Modern Fiction Studies; MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States; Resilience: A Journal of the Sustainable Humanities; SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literature; Western American Literature
Outside Tenure Reviewer: Academia Sinica, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Taipei, Taiwan; Amherst College, Department of English, Amherst, Massachusetts; Brown University, Environmental Studies, Providence, Rhode Island; East Carolina College, Department of English, Greensville, North Carolina; Gettysberg College, Environmental Studies, Gettysberg, Tennessee; Humboldt State University, Environmental Studies, Arcata, California;The Julliard School, Liberal Arts and English, New York, New York; Miami University, Department of Geography, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Oxford, Ohio; Oregon State University, Department of History, Philosophy and Religion, Corvallis, Oregon; Portland State University, English and Native American Studies, Portland, Oregon; University of California, Los Angeles, Department of English, Los Angeles, California; University of Guelph, Guelph, School of Theater and English Studies, Ontario, Canada; University of Idaho, Department of English, Moscow, Idaho; University of Massachusetts, English and Environmental Literature, Boston, Massachusetts; University of North Texas, Denton, Texas
Film Reviewer: Bullfrog Films; Women Make Movies
President, Arizona State University Faculty Women’s Association (FWA), 2015-2016
President (2012), Past President (2013), and President Elect (2011), Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)
Member, ASU University President’s Standing Committee on Sustainability Education, 2013- 2014
Member, ASU University President’s Award for Sustainability Committee, 2010-2013
Research Partner, The Environmental Humanities International Research Group, University of Turin, Italy, 2013-
Founder and Head, American Studies Association’s Environment and Culture Caucus (ASA-ECC), 1999-2010
