The Center for Environmental Futures (CEF) is an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students that reflects a longstanding investment in environmentalism and social justice at the University of Oregon and in the larger Eugene community. We engage the environmental humanities, social sciences, art, and architecture, in dialogue with allied fields. Our mission is to encourage faculty and students in interdisciplinary environmental studies research and teaching, to encourage and support members of the community to participate in the University’s environmental studies programming and problem-solving, and to cultivate relationships and build projects to address our most pressing environmental and social problems. We recognize, too, that problems of environment, justice, and culture call for a broad interdisciplinarity that includes the natural and physical sciences, communication and journalism, education, and law. The Center’s current co-directors are Stephanie LeMenager, the Barbara and Carlisle Moore Chair in English, and Marsha Weisiger, the Julie and Rocky Dixon Chair in U.S. Western History. The environmental humanities, which stands at the core of CEF, contextualizes and complements environmental science and policy with a focus on narrative, critical thinking, history, cultural analysis, aesthetics, and ethics. For over twenty years, the University of Oregon has placed the environmental humanities at the center of conversations about our ecological futures.
