Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Impressions from Kvarken and Vaasa
Nestled between Vaasa in Finland and UmeÃ¥ in Sweden is a mysterious moving landscape. The geology of the Kvarken Archipelago National Park makes it a dynamic and transient place, yet the recognizable Scandinavian climate and ecology lends it a timeless quality. In 2006 it became Finland’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site due to these unique…
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Snapshot: Ecocritics Welcome Here!
On 15 February, the RCC played host to a poster exhibition on ecocriticism. Master’s-level students working with Dr Felicitas Meifert-Menhard from LMU Munich’s English department had spent a semester learning about the wide reach and application of reading literary texts ecologically—not just contemporary texts concerned with anthropogenic climate change, but also much older texts that…
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Placing Gender: Gender and Environmental History
By Katie Holmes and Ruth Morgan: Despite Carolyn Merchant’s provocative 1990 article on gender and environment in the Journal of American History, this multifaceted discipline remains an under-developed area of inquiry. For example, the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) conference in July 2017 hosted just one panel on gender and environmental history, while presentations…
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Anthropocene and Citizen Science
Workshop Report: Anthropocene and Citizen Science: Evidence Gained through the “Opening-up” of Academic Knowledge Production? (19–20 July 2018, Munich) By Fabienne Will *Photos courtesy of author In July 2018, the Deutsches Museum hosted a workshop organized by the two projects Evidence Practices at the Interstice of Sciences, Humanities and the Public: The Anthropocene Debate and…
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The RCC Goes Bavarian!
With its wealth of alpine environments and cultural traditions, Bavaria calls to diverse audiences that are as rich as its own natural heritage. Through a host of new projects rooted in sharing and comparing Munich, Bavaria, and the Alpine region, the RCC is celebrating the home of its German headquarters as well as strengthening its…
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Making Tracks: Environmental Histories of the Brazilian Cerrado
By Claiton Marcio da Silva The Brazilian Cerrado made me an environmental historian. My interest in the agricultural transformations in Brazilian savannas—a biome located in the central part of Brazil that extends over an area of approximately 2.000.000 km²—started when I left the southern and subtropical regions of the country to seek employment in the…
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Environmental Histories of the Brazilian Cerrado
By Claiton Marcio da Silva *All images courtesy of the author, taken 2013 (unless otherwise specified). Featured image: Road to the Espírito Santo belvedere, Jalapão State Park, Tocantins The Brazilian Cerrado made me an environmental historian. My interest in the agricultural transformations in Brazilian savannas—a biome located in the central part of Brazil that extends…
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Feeling Eco-Adventurous? An Interview with Author John Morano
John Morano is a professor of journalism at Monmouth University in New Jersey. He has written four novels in his Eco-Adventure Series, as well as a textbook for film critics, Don’t Tell Me the Ending! He is currently working on his fifth novel, a story about endangered wolves. What motivated your transition from journalism to…
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Migrations, Crossings, Unintended Destinations: Ecological Transfers across the Indian Ocean, 1850–1920
Conference Report (11–12 October 2018, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany) By Ulrike Kirchberger (*Featured Image: “If someday…” by Abhijit Kar Gupta, CC-BY 2.0 via flickr. ) In the age of empire, thousands of species of plants and animals were transferred between Australia, Asia, and Africa. European settlers transported cattle, horses, and…