Our next Seasonal Session, co-hosted by EEHN and CRITIQUE, is ‘Autumn in a Graveyard’. It will take place on 3 October 2024, 3-4:30pm. We direct attention to the season, the place, and frameworks for thinking and feeling them together.
We ask: How can we think about our ambiguous belonging in the ecological community? In what ways do humans have a special relationship to death, compared to other types of beings? Do humans have a particular license to bring death to other beings for food and resources, and how is this expressed among different cultures? Should we think of ourselves as having obligations towards the soil, to enrich it with our bodies as leaves do in Autumn, when we pass?
These sessions are informal, reflective, and creative, and we limit the group size to 20. Attendees meet outside the Chrystal Macmillan Building at 15:00, after which we walk together to St Cuthbert’s Kirkyard (1 mile, approx 15 mins). Please note:
Registration via Eventbrite is mandatory: please click here to register.
Should I come? All interested in place-based critical ecological reflection are welcome to join, no special expertise or academic orientation required.
Yes, there is pre-reading: Val Plumwood, “Tasteless: Towards a Food-Based Approach to Death”, Environmental Values, Vol. 17, No. 3 (August 2008). The 8-page article is available here.
Please bring: Something to sit on and appropriate clothing for Edinburgh’s changeable weather.
Facilitator: Grace Garland, PhD Researcher in Political Theory. Staff profile here.
Meeting place: outside CMB at 15:00. SHARP.
Background: Seasonal Sessions are mini-fieldtrips organised by the Environmental Working Group, under the aegis of CRITIQUE, and supported by the Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network (EEHN). They have been running for three years and were awarded an SRS Environmental Changemaker Award in June 2024. Read more about the award here.
