Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Photo of the Week: Eliza Encheva and Stephanie Hood
Art bicycle by Netherlands-based artist Victor Sonna on display at the Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands exhibition at the Deutsches Museum. Sonna produces these disordered but functional bicycles from objects that would otherwise be destroyed, highlighting how the society of the anthropocene “will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we…
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Schneefernerhaus: The 15th Anniversary of the Environmental Research Station at Zugspitze
By Sibylle Zavala, RCC Environmental Studies Certificate Program candidate. Built into the rocks of the Zugspitze´s southern slope, 2,650 meters above sea level, is Germany’s highest research station. The Environmental Research Station Schneefernerhaus (in German “Umweltforschungsstation Schneefernerhaus, UFS”) acquired its name from the nearby glacier and comprises research station, observatory, and communication facility.
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CfP: Manufacturing Landscapes—Nature and Technology in Environmental History
28–31 May 2015, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China Co-sponsored by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, and the Center for Ecological History, Renmin University of China Nuclear power plants, bullet trains, factory farms, and ancient rice paddies are all forms of landscapes transformed by technology. They express a relationship between…
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A Forest of Signs: Mindful Communication in Human-Nature Relations among an Indigenous Community in the Brazilian Rainforest
By Wolfgang Kapfhammer During my fieldwork among the Sateré-Mawé, an Amerindian community in the Brazilian rainforest, I tried to find an adequate term to characterize the disposition of human agents when dealing with their non-human environment. I kept thinking about something like “attentive” or “mindful” as apt expressions, the latter already being somewhat familiar to…
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CfC: Doctoral Program “Environment and Society” at the LMU Munich, Germany
The RCC doctoral program “Environment and Society” invites applications from graduates in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences who wish to research the complex relationships between environment and society on an interdisciplinary basis. Our program is based at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, a joint initiative of LMU Munich and the…
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Job Vacancy: Two Student Assistant Positions
The RCC is looking for two students in any humanities subject to assist the work of the center on a part-time basis. Research assistants work between 8–12 hours per week as part of a small team. Duties include library service (supporting our international visiting fellows with library access, photocopying, etc.); assisting at conferences, workshops, and…
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Making Tracks: Maurits Ertsen
In the “Making Tracks” series, RCC fellows and alumni present their experiences in environmental humanities, retracing the paths that led them to the Rachel Carson Center. For more information, please click here. “When Not a Tree Hugger, Is One a Tree Hater?” (paraphrasing Doug Coupland) by Maurits Ertsen I am not an environmentalist. Don’t get…
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Medieval Reenactments and Unmediated Nature
By Brenda Black Several times a year I camp out at medieval festivals, trying to live the way people did a millennium ago. It’s a far cry from authentic in many ways, particularly in respect to hygiene: we have our treated water and container toilets and our food, although cooked over a fire, mostly comes…
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Making Tracks: Cameron Muir
In the “Making Tracks” series, RCC fellows and alumni present their experiences in environmental humanities, retracing the paths that led them to the Rachel Carson Center. For more information, please click here. “A Place Where All But Man Is Vile, and Every Prospect Displeases” by Cameron Muir Reading the other Making Tracks posts I am struck…