About

Altman Program

In an age of environmental peril, what use are the humanities? Environmental problems are often seen as technical challenges requiring scientific expertise. Yet the science establishing climate change and outlining countermeasures has been in place for decades and has received extraordinary public and governmental attention. The relentless warming of Earth in the face of this knowledge reminds us that environmental challenges are also matters of communication, imagination, representation, and justice. Large in scale, entwined with social and cultural institutions, and fundamentally political, they require not only scientific innovation but also expertise in language, law, rhetoric, philosophy, and culture. Indeed, addressing climate change may require nothing short of a new planetary social compact for the use of natural resources, negotiated across hundreds of societies, each with its own traditions, cultures, geographical limitations, and internal divisions.  This project can succeed only through extraordinary intellectual collaboration—the marriage of scientific advances with visionary conceptions of the future, deep knowledge of human history, and a capacity to forge a new ethics of human responsibility for all Earth’s inhabitants, present and future. While the scale of the challenge is unprecedented, much of the knowledge it demands has been the subject of  humanistic inquiry for millennia.

The 2023-2024 Altman Program invites the Miami University community to join an urgent, transdisciplinary conversation on environmental justice. What political, economic, conceptual, and cultural barriers stifle the realization of an environmentally just and sustainable society? What is the meaning of “justice” at the astonishing scale of the planet? What ethical frameworks and imaginative interventions are essential to facing the environmental challenges of our time?  What can we learn from the history of human responses to social and ecological peril? And how can scholars, students, and the public forge a more just and sustainable future for our planet?

As Geoffrion Fellows, a community of Miami University undergraduates have collaborated on researching the environmental and social impacts of the Chem-Dyne disaster to create this educational webpage. Additionally, fellows have conducted independent humanities research and projects related to different environmental justice causes. To learn more about each Geoffrion Fellow’s contribution, bios have been included below.

Biographies

Annalise Chapdelaine is a senior honors student majoring in diplomacy and global politics, comparative religion, and German. She is a Presidential Fellow and a student research intern with Dr. Hillel Gray's "Empathy and the Religious Enemy project. Her research interests include ethnic nationalism, human rights and migration, conflict resolution, and Eastern and Central European studies.

Caleb Chun is a junior History and Professional Writing major with a minor in Anthropology. His independent research regards the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign, a WWII-era Japanese campaign against the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi, and its environmental implications. Within the group project, Caleb analyzed The Cincinnati Enquirer and its coverage of the Chem-Dyne disaster.

Mollie Duffy is a junior public administration major from Chicago. Her Geoffrion Fellowship research uses a framing experiment to see how voting-age Americans perceive three different terminologies used to describe people who permanently or temporarily relocate because of a climate change induced risk. To support the group project, Mollie worked with Annalise to develop a government and policy timeline of the Chem-Dyne to highlight local, state, and federal government interaction with the site. 

Sam Fouts is a senior English: creative writing and literature major from Cleveland. As a Geoffrion Fellow, his research involved using Medieval literature to address climate change through temporal framings and Old English forms like the riddle. For the group project, he researched the history and language the EPA’s Superfund programs to detail what a Superfund site is.

Meredith Perkins is a junior diplomacy & global politics and English: creative writing major from northern Kentucky. As a Geoffrion Fellow, her independent research focuses on Central Appalachia’s resurging black lung crisis and the historic and contemporary methods coal companies have used to avoid following safety regulations in mines. Within the group project, Meredith focused on designing the website and converting the Chem-Dyne’s Five-Year Review to an accessible set of takeaways for members of the public to learn about the EPA’s reported cleanup efforts. You can read Meredith’s work in “The Chem-Dyne Five Year Review: Key Takeaways.”

Ryan Rosu is a senior English literature, philosophy, and film studies triple major from Cleveland, Ohio. As a Geoffrion Fellow, he researched climate change in cinema, analyzing the differences in representation on a tiered budget scale. Within the website, Ryan created the archive of reporting on Chem-Dyne from the Hamilton JournalNews. He also created the introductory video.