Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Video: “Incoming Technology and African Innovation”
Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga is an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He works on the history of science, technology, and society in Africa. He was a Carson Fellow from July until December 2011. This video is part of a series of RCC Profiles. To view more videos from the series, please visit…
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Making Tracks: Melanie Arndt
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. Chernobyl By Melanie Arndt I grew up in a country that does not exist anymore—East Germany or the GDR. Perhaps this partially explains…
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“Nachhaltig Schenken”: Tips on Sustainable Presents
On 9 September 2013, Kmart (an American chain of discount stores) aired its first Christmas advert, giving shoppers a mere 106 days to make their Christmas purchases. It starts earlier every year, and it’s not just businesses who ask us to shop. During the recession in the UK, politicians took to the air to encourage…
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Material Matters: A Report on the 8th Biennial ASLE-UKI Conference
By Nicole Seymour Thanks to the Rachel Carson Center, I was able to attend the ASLE-UKI (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, UK and Ireland chapter) conference last month at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England. As a regular attendee of the main ASLE conference—which brings hordes of fleece-and-sandal-wearing professors to US…
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New Design for Seeing the Woods
We’ve updated our blog design to link it more closely with our other social media platforms. We hope you like the new look! If you have any thoughts, please let us know in the comments.
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Photo of the Week: Giacomo Parrinello
This photo depicts a detail of the Cretto, a massive and contested land-art piece conceived by Italian artist Alberto Burri and realized between 1984 and 1988. The piece is located in Western Sicily, Italy, in an area struck by a major seismic disaster in 1968. The Cretto – meaning crack, rift – consists of a…
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Making Tracks: Diana Mincyte
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. By Diana Mincyte My earliest encounters with “non-human” nature were those of gardening. Like many others in the socialist world, my parents had…
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After The Fire, The Flowers Bloom
Reposted from Wild Mountain Echoes by kind permission of Christine Hass. Christine is a professional ecologist interested in mammal social behavior, including the role of sound in social communication. She also enjoys recording natural soundscapes, many of which feature in her blog posts. *** It seems as if every mountain range in the southwest has…
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Anthropocene: New Temporalities, New Spatialities
Post by Helen Pallett It is perhaps self-evident that the advent of the Anthropocene, or at least its announcement, urges us to think deeply about time. Thinking the Anthropocene is simultaneously to situate human society in the context of deep geological time, to draw attention to the rapid changes wrought on earth processes in the…