FAUNA Environmental Humanities Literary and Art Magazine
Dedicated to celebrating environmentally themed poetry, essays, and artworks by Colby students, FAUNA is curated and edited by the Environmental Humanities Student Advisory Board of the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities, with EH Program Coordinator Ayla Fudala serving as the Staff Editor.
MOST RECENT ISSUE
The fourth edition of FAUNA was published in Spring 2022, and features extraordinary art and writing by both Colby students and staff. The magazine begins with the land, contemplating the landscapes that shape us, and their complex and often traumatic histories, before moving on to a celebration of metamorphosis, rebirth, and the shifting seasons. The focus then turns from the land to the sea, as we dive below the waves to appreciate underwater flora and fauna; learning about their intricate beauty but also the manifold dangers which threaten them. To see for yourself, please read the fourth edition here.
PREVIOUS ISSUES
The third edition of FAUNA was published in Spring 2021, and features a seasonally themed layout, with artwork and writing moving from autumn forests, to winter snows, to spring flowers, to summer seas. Content includes beautiful prints, vibrant photographs, informative essays, thoughtful poems, and more. You can read the third edition here.
The second edition of FAUNA was published in Spring 2020, and included not only poems, essays, photographs, drawings, and paintings by students, but also a poem and a comic from two professors who participated in the inaugural Colby Summer Institute. Please read the second edition here.
The first edition of FAUNA was published in Spring 2019 and was a great success, including exquisite and insightful works by students. You can read the first edition here. Copies were even distributed to the scholars who came from across the world to participate in the inaugural Colby Summer Institute in Environmental Humanities, a week of lectures, workshops, and field trips which took place in August 2019.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
We strongly encourage you to submit your environmentally-themed photographs, paintings, drawings, etchings, short stories, poems, and articles to the upcoming fourth edition of FAUNA. No pieces of writing longer than two pages in size 12 font, please. Photos must be high quality, at least 101 pixels per inch. All submissions are due by April 15th, 2022. Please email your submissions to the Environmental Humanities Program Coordinator, Ayla Fudala, at [email protected].
ORIGINS
The idea of creating an environmental humanities magazine, devoted to Colby student art and writing, was first devised by the 2019 Environmental Student Advisory Board (SAB), along with Environmental Humanities Program Coordinator Ayla Fudala. We wanted a way to showcase and share the artistic accomplishments of students, and spread the environmental humanities (EH) message across campus. As EH is a relatively new field, many students hadn’t even heard of it before. FAUNA highlights this groundbreaking field, motivates students to take EH courses, and inspires and celebrates environmentally themed creative work.
The SAB tried out several name before settling on “Charismatic Megafauna”, a term often used in the fantastic classes taught by former Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow of Environmental Humanities, now Assistant Professor of English Christopher Walker, from which many of the SAB members were recruited. We decided to shorten the name, and FAUNA was born.
We look forward to continuing to produce new editions of FAUNA, with the mission of displaying excellent student work and spreading the message of the Environmental Humanities across the Colby campus and beyond. If you are a Colby student and have any environmentally themed art or writing, or if you’re interested in helping to run the magazine as part of the Student Advisory Board, please email Ayla Fudala at [email protected].