Taking Pause: The Role of Art and Literature in Reimagining Human-Nonhuman Relations and Transdisciplinary Collaboration

Abstract

The academy's separation of the arts from the sciences constricts researchers' opportunities to engage with works of art and literature that pause our time-worn processes of data collection and analysis. From the works of Humboldt and Goethe, to more recent writers and artists, literature and art offer us moments to stop and think differently about the ways in which we interact with our environment and others, human and nonhuman. In moments of enchantment, awe or stillness, we might lose ourselves, and imagine other less anthropocentric ways of being in the world and new transdisciplinary forms of collaboration.