David Janzen’s teaching and research takes an interdisciplinary approach to environmental and science communication, cultural and decolonial studies, and crisis theory.
His current project “Soil as a relational media” examines the ways in which social and natural processes interact and remain embedded in soil and land. This interdisciplinary project is a collaboration with scientists and indigenous communities to analyze geological histories of land, human-environment relations, and indigenous histories of place. Through this analysis, it aims to build more sustainable and decolonial understandings of soil. This project is funded by a Canada Tri-Council New Frontiers in Research Fund—Exploration Grant.
Janzen has published and presented work in the fields of cultural and indigenous studies, crisis theory, aesthetics, and environmental communication. He is also a poet and writer. His chapbook Nature: Nurture (Baseline Press, London) is out in Spring 2021.
Sample publications:
2020 “The Ambivalence of Crisis,” English Studies in Canada 44.2.
2018 “Subject to a New Law: Historicizing Rights and Resistance in Mayan Anti-Mining Activism,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 25.1.
2018 Janzen, D. and I. Hussey, “What the Paris Agreement Means for Alberta's Oil Sands Majors,” Parklands Institute. ISBN: 978-1-894949-58-3
2017 “Energy Demo(s): Rhythmanalysis of Extraction and Environment,” Public: Art/Culture/Ideas, 55: 103-108.
2017 “Potential Unfettered: Narrative transformation as Historical Transition in Ulysses,” ESC: English Studies in Canada 43.1-2.
2014 “Poverty/Line: Aesthetic and Political Subjects in Santiago Sierra’s ‘Line’ Photographs,” Evental Aesthetics Journal 2.4.
Courses taught:
SPCOM 490: Media and Environment
SPCOM 431: Crisis Communication
SPCOM 399: Communication Inquiry
SPCOM 223: Public Speaking
SPCOM 193: Communication in the Sciences
ARTS 130: Environment & Communication