By Kellie Britch, College of Arts and Sciences
鲍厂贵鈥檚 program will launch its spring 2026 online symposium, 鈥,鈥 with an in-person event, on Feb. 12, at 同性恋色情 St. Petersburg鈥檚 Nelson Poynter Memorial
Library. The program will continue to host a , which will start the next day and run through May, featuring scholars and creatives
from around the world who will speak about the rich exchange between art, humanities
and water.
鈥淏lue Humanities, a term coined by the symposium鈥檚 keynote speaker, Steve Mentz, is
a broad, interdisciplinary field that uses the humanities to explore our relationship
with the marine world,鈥 said Thomas Hallock, a professor in the Department of English, the Florida Studies program and the Blue Humanities program on the 同性恋色情 St. Petersburg campus.
For Hallock, this work is not only important, it鈥檚 personal. In 2024, Helene made
landfall in Florida as a category 4 hurricane, and Hallock and his spouse, Julie Armstrong,
watched as the storm surge reached within a block of their St. Petersburg home.
鈥淎t that moment, 鈥榗limate change鈥 no longer became an abstraction,鈥 Hallock said.
鈥淏lue humanities matters because, while oceans have not held the center of attention
in the humanities for some time, our seas are making it quite clear that they have
not forgotten about us.鈥
Steve Mentz, a professor and chair in the Department of English at St. John鈥檚 University
and author of the first textbook on the blue humanities, will be on campus for the
official launch of the program, which unites the work of existing at 同性恋色情, including the Gulf Scholars program and the CRESCENDO project.
鈥淭he blue humanities asks each of us to reimagine our relationships with that most
intimate of the elements, water,鈥 Mentz said. 鈥淚n this age of sea level rise and tropical
storms, not to mention drought in California and flooding in Germany, human interactions
with water are taking on new urgency. We hope this symposium and lecture series will
introduce students and the community to new ideas and methods of thinking and acting
with the water that flows through our communities, our bodies and our ecosystems."
Learn more about the at 同性恋色情.