Latest issue of Journal of Florida Studies focuses on sustainability

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (May 6, 2014) -The Center for Interdisciplinary Writing and Research (CIWR) at Daytona State College has released its third issue of the Journal of Florida Studies (JFS), a peer-reviewed, open-access electronic publication dedicated to the study and appreciation of Florida.

This issue, “The Humanities Speak for Sustainability,” presents thoughtful and provocative analyses of global/local environmental and social issues by questioning the way environment and culture are imagined. According to the publication’s editor in chief, Dr. Casey Blanton, one JFS writer perhaps says it best: “Ecological problems are primarily the result of a bad ecology of ideas.”

“Ecological sciences and the humanities must be coupled in the sustainability enterprise whether we talk about the state of Florida or planet Earth,” Blanton notes. “To sustain our human communities, our natural resources and our rich global biological and cultural heritage, we must explore humans’ beliefs and ideas about their relationship to nature and integrate knowledge and policy across the disciplines in order to understand, inform and direct human development toward a responsible, sustainable future.

“The humanities, after all, teach us that acknowledging how we think about a problem is the first step in solving it,” she said.
Blanton said the writers in this issue seek to examine the role of rhetoric, media, history, art and advertising in establishing, complicating, altering and/or breaking down the way Florida’s environment is constructed and  represented. In addition to the themed articles, JFS offers poetry, film and book reviews, as well as a photography portfolio.

For more information, contact Blanton, BlantoC@DaytonaState.edu, or Managing Editor Michael Flota, FlotaM@DaytonaState.edu.

www.journaloffloridastudies.org

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