Environments
Critical, urgent work on the state of the planet, in the past, present and future, takes place in all Departments in our Faculty.
Work in our Faculty helps us to understand the physical world we live in, from world-leading research on urban development and the representation of the city to critical explorations of ‘landscape’ in a wide variety of disciplines.
A major intervention is being led in the Environmental Humanities in the University and beyond. Research is taking place which seeks to analyse and investigate the complex interrelationships between human activity (cultural, artistic, economic, and political) and the environment.
English and Comparative Literary Studies
New ground is being broken in the field of the Environmental Humanities, particularly through the work of the Critical Environments group. Their research ranges from historical work on ecopoetics and environmental disaster, to creative responses to the current climate emergency and imagining environments of the future. The department is also forward-thinking in the ways in which it takes this research beyond the university, for example through work with Low Carbon Scotland and the After Oil School.
Cities in the spotlight
Film and Television Studies and Theatre and Performance Studies both have major projects that engage with the past, present and future of the city. A collaboration between Film and Television Studies and Theatre and Performance Studies on the AHRC-funded Sensing the City Project turns the critical spotlight on the sensate, performing human body in the city in the run-up to Coventry’s City of Culture year in 2021. Research activity which is gearing up to Coventry's City of Culture year is taking place in all the departments of the Faculty of Arts.
Artistic interpretations
The Faculty also produces a range of research that seeks to understand the landscape as a critical and artistic construct. The Classics and Ancient History department recently hosted a major international conference on the imagined landscapes of the ancient world, and colleagues in the department of Film and Television Studies write about a variety of cinematic and televisual landscapes, including award-winning monographs.
Our impact...
The Global Green Media Production Network (headed up by the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies) is a two year AHRC-funded network drawing on international and interdisciplinary perspectives to examine the environmental impact of the global screen industry. Working with policy and industry partners from the UK, Ghana, Hong Kong, Nigeria and India it will consider the political economy of production, as related to 'green' economic incentives, address the tensions between local practices and global policies, assess the environmental consequences of digital production and develop the vocabulary to allow cultural production to be placed more concretely in its environmental and social context.
Environments relates to our research themes of Sustainability and Development, Histories, Creativity and Theory, Understanding the Human, Ethics, Rights and Social Justice and Understanding the Role and Function of Organisations and Markets.
