Stephanie Gottlob is a movement artist, interdisciplinary scholar, and educator whose work explores how embodied inquiry can cultivate ethical relationships with the more-than-human world. Her scholarship brings environmental humanities, environmental ethics, feminist new materialism, critical cartography, and creative practice into conversation through innovative forms of teaching, research, and artistic inquiry.
In 2019, Stephanie began a three-and-a-half-year embodied inquiry across the ten major biomes of North America. Living and dancing as remotely as possible, she immersed herself within each biome for four to six weeks, investigating how movement improvisation, somatic inquiry, photography, videography, contemplative practice, creative practices, and ecological observation disclose different ways of sensing, perceiving, moving, relating, and knowing with the more-than-human world.
This inquiry became the foundation for Dancing the Biomes—an indoor/outdoor, transdisciplinary, eco-embodied undergraduate pedagogy designed to explore how embodied inquiry can cultivate ethical relationships with the more-than-human world. As the curriculum evolved through implementation across multiple universities, it also became the foundation for Stephanie’s doctoral research in Prescott College’s Sustainability Education PhD program.
Her current research asks how embodied inquiry transforms the ways we come to know and inhabit ethical relationships with the more-than-human world. Through curriculum design, interdisciplinary scholarship, and creative practice, she explores how educational experiences can cultivate new ways of knowing, relating, and responding to the ecological challenges of our time.