Traci Warkentin | EUC | York University

Associate Professor, Teaching Stream

Credentials

PhD Environmental Studies, York University
PBD Environmental Sciences, Capilano University
MA Values & the Environment, Lancaster University
BSc (Honours) Biology & Marine Ecology, University of British Columbia

Research Keywords

Environmental Education; Feminist Environmental Ethics & Philosophy; Animal Studies; Novel Urban Ecologies; Embodied Epistemologies & Ontologies.

Contact Information

4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3

416 736 2100

traciw@yorku.ca

Research Interests

My interdisciplinary work examines the intersections of experiential learning, place/context, environmental ethics, and human-animal relationships. Starting from a feminist epistemological standpoint that understands environmental education as necessarily intertwined with social justice, my teaching practice and pedagogical research bring together content with form by investigating the influence of material and social contexts on how and what people learn about the environment and animals, as well as by developing methods for ethical ways of making knowledge. I am drawn to FES for its commitment to creative and active scholarship, and its encouragement of progressive modes of teaching and learning, which strive to engage with the world beyond the academy to create positive change.

Research Projects

Pedagogical Innovation Projects

I am currently developing the inclusion of two experiential learning tools in my teaching practice: creative environmental activism and citizen science/amateur naturalism. Both help students to connect theoretical concepts with real-world practices and tangible situations they can directly relate to and learn from first-hand. Moreover, these tools facilitate environmental action and empower students to get involved and do something about the issues they are studying.

Outside of the classroom, I am engaged in public environmental awareness by transforming my broader work to reach nonacademic audiences, employing tools of creative advocacy and popular technologies. My primary website, the Urban Animal Advocacy Lab (www.urban-animals.org), presents insights from my research, and emerging revelations from the academic realm, in ways that are fun, accessible, constructive and non-confrontational for a general audience. It is an exciting format through which to educate and collaborate with the public online, and one that I am prioritizing as a teaching tool for future educators and environmental advocates in my courses.

Research Output

Articles

Warkentin, T. (2012). Must every animal studies scholar be vegan? Special Issue: Animal Others, Invited Symposium: Feminists Encountering Animals. Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy 27(3), 499-504.

Warkentin, T. (2011). Cultivating Urban Naturalists: Teaching Experiential, Place-based Education through Nature Journaling in Central Park. Journal of Geography 110(6), 227-238.

Warkentin, T. (2011). Interspecies Etiquette in Place: Ethical Affordances in Swim-with- dolphin Programs. Ethics & the Environment 16(1), 99-122.

Wilson, M., Hickey, M., Craine, J., Fawcett, L., Oberhauser, A., Roe, E., & Warkentin, T. (2011). Cyborg Spaces and Monstrous Places: Critical Geographic Engagements with Harawayian Theory. Aether: The Journal of Media Geography 8(A), 42-67.

Warkentin, T. (2010). Interspecies Etiquette: An Ethics of Paying Attention to Animals. Ethics & the Environment, 15(1), 101-121.

Oakley, J., Watson, G., Russell, C., Cutter-Mackenzie, A., Fawcett, L., Kuhl, G., Russell, J., van der Waal, M., & Warkentin, T. (2010). Animal Encounters in Environmental Education Research: Responding to the “Question of the Animal.” Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 15, 86-102.

Warkentin, T. (2006). Dis/Integrating Animals: Ethical Dimensions of the Genetic Engineering of Animals for Human Consumption. Special Issue: Genetic Technologies and Animals. AI & Society, 20, 80-102.

Leduc, T., & Warkentin, T. (2006). Creative Disruptions in the Subway of Critical Environmental Pedagogy. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 11, 166-178.

Warkentin, T. (2002). It’s Not Just What You Say, But How You Say It: An Exploration of the Moral Dimensions of Metaphor and the Phenomenology of Narrative. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 7(2), 241-55.

Book Chapters

Warkentin T. (2012). Thinking like a Whale: Interdisciplinary Methods for the Study of Human-Animal Interactions. In R. Mitchell & J. Smith (eds), Experiencing Animal Minds: An Anthology of Human-Animal Encounters (129-141). New York: Columbia University Press.

Warkentin, T., & Fawcett, L. (2010). Whale and Human Agency in World-Making: Decolonizing Whale-Human Encounters. In R. Acampora (ed), Metamorphoses of the Zoo: Animal Encounter after Noah (103-121). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Warkentin, T. (2009). Whale Agency: Affordances and Acts of Resistance in Captive Environments. In S. McFarland & R. Hediger (eds) Animals and Agency: An Interdisciplinary Exploration (23-43). Leiden: Brill.

Warkentin, T. (2009). Dis/Integrating Animals: Ethical Dimensions of the Genetic Engineering of Animals for Human Consumption. In C. Gigliotti (ed), Leonardo’s Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals (151-171). Bioethics/Applied Philosophy Series. Springer Netherlands.