Envisioning A Regional Environmental Humanities

Nature and Human Communities Initiative

The Nature and Human Communities Initiative is an interdisciplinary project that seeks to foster academic engagement across disciplines, with regional human environments in ecological contexts.

	The NHC Initiative The intellectual goal of the Nature and Human Communities Initiative is to foster study of the Susquehanna Valley as an integrated landscape of human culture and nature, uniting perspectives of the humanities, social sciences, planning, community out-reach, and creative expression, while engaging also the environmental sciences. Read more ...
	Cultures at the Confluence. NHCI’s primary programmatic focus is *Cultures at the Confluence: Mapping the Susquehanna Valley from the Inside.* This three-year-old program seeks to highlight the intersection of cultural landscapes and narratives with environmental systems from a perspective inside the region. Read more ...
	Rivertowns Initiative The Cultures at the Confluence program is also allied with the Bucknell Rivertowns Initiative, with its focus on social-ecological community studies and academic community service. Read more ...
	Susquehanna Writers Institute The Susquehanna Writers Institue began in summer 2009 with support from the Snow Trust. Working with select students in an intense workshop on nonfiction writing, to develop narrative content material for online projects in oral istory, nature writing and “deep mapping” of cultural landscapes. Read more ...
	Envisioning A Regional Environmental Humanities Imagine school children, university students and local residents kayaking or hiking down the Susquehanna Corridor, walking the streets of rivertowns, or navigating the Valley in cyberspace -- encountering interpretive signage and data on-site, on-line, in-print, or through artistic storytelling, highlighting layers of culture engaged with the natural systems around them. Read more ...
	Susquehanna Colloquium for Nature and Human Communities A watershed-wide network of academics and community members involved in the above projects. Its projects include the journal Watershed, published from Bloomsburg University by editor Jerry Wemple. Read more ...

Audio of James Rickard '08

NHCI undergraduate research fellow

Listen to the audio of James Rickard '08, on James Fenimore Cooper and the Susquehanna

Thunderbird Petroglyph on the Susquehanna River

Thunderbird Petroglyph

NHCI participants won the 2008 Maxwell Award for Administrative Excellence and 2009 Miller Prize for outstanding student honors research (second time in three years). The program currently is coordinating research sponsored by the Conservation Fund on Native American cultures in the Susquehanna Valley.