Schwarzman Session: (Anthropo)scene: Climate Crisis, Film, and Sustainability

Schwarzman Sessions are peer-led gatherings where conversations generate collaborations and move ideas into action. Because seats are limited, registrants will be automatically placed on the waitlist and will be notified via email if they are selected to participate. 

Join environmental media scholar Dr. Hunter Vaughan (Emerson College) and Tanya Wiedeking (Yale Planetary Solutions) in a discussion on how sustainability can be implemented and re-oriented across disciplines.

Environmental humanities has emerged as an interdisciplinary field of study, examining and interpreting the world as it is altered by the effects of a changing climate. As screen and media culture evolves alongside this changing climate, it too must grapple with how these shifts impact its practices and the stories that are told. To what extent can we consider the digital transition a green transition? Are we embracing the innate connectedness between nature and culture? How can climate awareness and sustainable practices be brought into dialogue with the humanities in a more overt way? How can a broader swath of communities be engaged in defining which stories need telling through film? In what ways should we navigate digital solutions, or should we be looking for solutions to the digital?

Hunter Vaughan is an environmental media scholar and cultural historian focusing on the relationship between media technologies, social justice, and the environment. Dr. Vaughan is the author of Where Film Meets Philosophy (2013) and Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: the Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies (2019), and co-editor of the Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory (with Tom Conley, 2018) and Film and Television Production in the Age of Climate Crisis (with Pietari Kaapa, 2022.) Hunter is co-founding editor of the Journal of Environmental Media  (with Meryl Shriver-Rice), co-director of the AHRC-funded Global Green Media Network  (with Pietari Kaapa), and co-principal investigator on the Sustainable Subsea Netwoks project (with Nicole Starosielski), funded by the Internet Society Foundation. 

Tanya Wiedeking is interim director for Yale Planetary Solutions, the university’s campus-wide climate and sustainability initiative. Previously she was operations manager at Pierson College where she supported student sustainability initiatives in partnership with Yale Sustainability, the Yale Sustainable Food Program, and the Yale Carbon Charge. Prior to Yale, Tanya worked for the BBC as a senior director of the corporation’s international publishing program, bringing productions such as Planet Earth to audiences around the world.