The Storymap “Look at the Water Coming!” — Remembering the 1896 Hurricane in Florida and Imagining the Storms to Come” is an interdisciplinary public humanities collaborative by five UF faculty members, supported by two graduate students. Cynthia Barnett (Journalism), Jack Davis (History), Terry Harpold (English), Barbara Mennel (Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere), and Ken Sassaman (Anthropology) brought different areas of expertise to the project from environmental journalism and the history of the gulf to cultural imagination of climate crisis and memory culture of climate catastrophes. Through conversations among the project team, these areas coalesced into a history of the 1896 hurricane.
The UF project team is part of the Coasts, Climates, the Humanities, and the Environment Consortium (CCHEC), which was awarded a $150,000 two-year grant (extended to three years due to COVID-19) in 2019 by the Mellon Foundation to pilot a consortium of four research institutions to study coasts, climates, and the environmental humanities. The Mellon Foundation supported CCHEC is a partnership under the leadership of the University of Georgia, including Louisiana State University, the University of Florida, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as an alliance of regional stakeholders.
Research into the diversity and complexity of coastal zones and cultures through the media of environmental humanities is growing rapidly in the context of climate instability. The consortium engages diverse community groups, students, and faculty in projects that study the environmental history and impacts of storms and tidal waters on a series of specific locations. Participants integrate archival research with public engagement in order to create humanities-informed models of understanding for contemporary and emerging challenges.
At UF, the Storymap project was directed by Barbara Mennel (Rothman Chair and Director, Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere). Cynthia Barnett (Environmental Journalist in Residence); Jack E. Davis (Professor of History and Rothman Family Chair in the Humanities); Terry Harpold (Associate Professor of English and Director, Imagining Climate Change); Kenneth E. Sassaman (Hyatt and Cici Brown Professor of Florida Archaeology) collectively researched, wrote the text, and selected materials. StoryMap editor was Tyler J. Smith (Cultural Resources Intern, National Park Service Climate Change Response Program) and the videography and motion graphics were provided by Ryan Lester (videographer and graduate student, UF Department of Urban and Regional Planning).
