Join us for the first session for 2025 of this lively and stimulating reading group. In its fourth year, Reading Environments will explore 'Critical Readings in the Environmental Humanities' across autumn and spring seasons, with autumn focusing on chapters from Kathryn Yusoff’s new book Geologic Life: Inhuman Intimacies and the Geophysics of Race (2024).

To begin, for the Māehe March session we will read Kathryn Yusoff 'Introduction' Geologic Life, Duke University Press 2024. pp 1-38. Full PDF of introduction available for download here.

Convened by Su Ballard (Art History), Bonnie Etherington, and Adam Grener (English Literatures and Creative Communication), Reading Environments is a reading group in the Environmental Humanities, that gathers in the company of the architectures and artworks of Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, to read and discuss recent texts in the critical environmental humanities. Our concern is with open conversation, gentle attention, careful noticing, and slow reading. How are authors looking closely at their environment; what kinds of approaches and understanding are emerging that are specific to 2025? What actions are needed?

While in 2025 the readings sit adjacent to rather than directly tied to the exhibitions in the Adam as in previous years, being in the gallery encourages unexpected and more-than-human connections, especially when the artworks are listening....

As always, everyone is welcome, whether well-read or not. An open free-flowing conversation is our goal.