History Professor Daniel McNeil discusses how public-facing humanities research can contribute to the critical discourse on energy and climate change. A short excerpt is included below. The full article, “Strange Weather, Shy Elitism and Soul Rebels” by Nick Ward, can be viewed online.
We see climate change everywhere.
Its present and looming consequences have begun to reconfigure every aspect of human life, including how we understand our mortal selves, others, and the space we occupy.
People from regions that are currently most impacted by the crisis are already dispersing around the globe. As the climate continues to shift, this phenomenon will surely pick up significant steam.
Considering the contemporary, racist political discourse on migration and borders, which has led to world-altering reforms like Brexit and migrant bans, it is safe to say that we are literally and figuratively just beginning to get our feet wet in an era of profound climate, migration, and cultural volatility.
Daniel McNeil, a Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University, joined the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto in 2019-20 as its Visiting Public Humanities Faculty Fellow. As the first person to hold the Fellowship, he has been working on several projects that will bring humanities research about the critical discourse on climate and energy into the public realm for discussion, debate and examination. He took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss his work with the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
Professor McNeil, congratulations on your Visiting Public Humanities Faculty Fellowship. The work you are doing is complex, but so critical to understanding the contemporary and future realities for those most impacted by ‘strange weather.’ How are reductive stereotypes of racialized people and migrants becoming so prevalent in the era of climate change?
Thanks! In 2017, I helped organize an international and bilingual conference on Migration, Representation, Stereotypes at the University of Ottawa that brought together scholars and practitioners in fields such as Public History, Theatre and Performance Studies, and Cultural and Migration Studies.
Building on the relationships developed at this conference, I co-edited Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture, a collection of academic essays and creative storytelling, with David Dean, co-director of the Carleton Centre for Public History, and Yana Meerzon, Director of the Studies in Migration Research Group at the University of Ottawa. As first- and second-generation migrants to Canada, we were particularly interested in challenging the stereotypes that reduce migrants and refugees to a few, simple, essential characteristics such as irrationality, rhythm, animism, oneness with nature, and sensuality. Chapters consider, for example, how academics, artists, and practitioners have developed pointed rejoinders to contemporary accounts of climate refugees that recycle colonial stereotypes about “primitive Others” in need of aid, expert management, and supervision.