Environmental collapse permeates our lives, creating anxiety, depression, helplessness, anger. One known path towards healing and towards collective action is to come into a more tangible relationship with our environments. This begins with what we call ecological attention: A deepened focus on relationships among organisms and environments. When we leave our labs, screens, and classrooms to move out into the world, we ground our sense of ecological health/unhealth in the experiential as well as the theoretical. We reawaken awareness of ecological beauty, strangeness, and complexity, including the sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste of the environments that house and sustain us. This deepened awareness leads to a desire for care. A desire for care leads to a desire to act. Ecology, Attention, Action.
What?
With support from the College of Arts and Sciences Expanding Horizons Initiative, we're hosting a monthly discussion group centered on this concept.
Who?
Open to all (students, faculty, staff, community members, visitors).
When?
About once a month, 2025-26 dates to be posted soon.
Where?
Classroom-based meetings held at 11635 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH (), room 140. Excursions take place at nearby locations, details below.
We're planning two discussion group meetings (dates coming soon!) and several events with community partners.
October
10/3: Encountering Forest Hill Park
Blurb coming soon.
When/Where: Friday, 10/3, 12:45 – 2 pm. Meet the bus at ϳԹ Tinkham Veale University Center, 11038 Bellflower Road for transport, or join the group at Forest Hill Park Tennis courts if that works better for you (East Cleveland, 2074 Lee Road, 41.528042, -81.573892).
What: Explore this fascinating space; learn how the park's history intersects with redlining, white flight, opportunity hoarding; participate in exercises in connection to nature with community mentors.
10/28: Attending to place: An exercise in embodied, place-conscious learning
What happens when we redirect attention to the places we teach learn? How does education divert our attention from these human and non- human systems?
When/Where: Tuesday, 10/28, 1pm – 2:15 pm. Meet in Allen Ford Auditorium, or join the group at Lakeview at 1:15 if that works better for you
What: Read a paper (). Participate in a silent walk to Lakeview Cemetery, 12316 Euclid Ave. At Lakeview, join activities intended to connect to nature and place.
Why: Restorative break, like-minded people, thought provoking reading, contemplate relationships between places, bodies, ecosystems, education.
Email fey.parrill@case.edu for more info.
Click here to grab an event flyer.
October
We convened at 11635 Euclid Ave for lunch and short walk around the area. Participants met plants growing in the neighborhood and engaged in an "active looking" practice facilitated by Fey Parrill. We focused on the use of visual attention as a way to reconnect to nature.
November
We met in Harkness Classroom. After lunch, we took an urban sound walk. (A sound walk is a walk with a focus on listening to the environment.) Facilitated by Francesca Brittan. We focused on how music, noise, silence, and natural soundscapes impact our physical and mental health.
December
We convened at 11635 Euclid Ave for lunch and learned about research on the intersection of religious/spiritual beliefs and nature connection, facilitated by Joshua Wilt, Julie Exline, Sudi Harbool, and Anastasia Frank. We carried out a meditative exercise and discussed how our religious and spiritual beliefs impact what we attend to, how we feel, and how we make sense of the world.
January
After lunch at at 11635 Euclid Ave, Tim Beal facilitated a writing exercise entitled Prayerful Animism: Playing with Inherited Forms. We played with the poetic form of the collect (pronounced “CAH-lect,” not “cuh-LECT") as a means of cultivating earth creatureliness in a more than human world.
February (early)
We met at the Cleveland Museum of Art and conducted a slow looking exercise and discussion cented on the Rose B. Simpson exhibit Strata (), in a discussion facilitated by Andrea Rager and Car Aldana. We asked how seeing works of art through an ecocritical lens help us make sense of and address the climate crisis.
February (late)
Nárcisz Fejes and Anurag Rakesh facilitated a discussion in Crawford Hall, Room 111. We engaged in a slow tasting experience with our lunch, talked about how can attention to food and food systems facilitates nature connection and systems change, planted seeds, and tasted "AI cheese".
April
After lunch in 11635 Euclid, undergraduate fellows shared what they have learned, where they would like to see the group go, and how they might participate or recommend participation to others.
May
In Mather House 100, we brought together people across campus who are interested in discussing opportunities and challenges around an environmental humanities major or minor at the undergraduate level.