Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Cicadian Rhythms: How Suburbs Saved – and Threaten – the US’s 17-Year Cicadas
Post by Christopher Sellers With piercing red eyes and a song like the soundtrack from a 50’s science-fiction film, the 17-year cicadas have stormed up out of the soils of the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. for their single month or so of adult life. Though their brief otherworldly chorus is, in human terms, ancient,…
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Job: Digital Humanities Research Specialist
The Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society seeks a part-time digital humanities research specialist to join our small team working on the Environment & Society Portal. This is a flexible, 20h/week position. Negotiable start date between November 2013 and January 2014. Responsibilities: €¢ Serve as liaison between the team and the developer; track project…
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Extracting Stories
Workshop: Environmental History of Latin America and the Caribbean – Saisama, Colombia, 8-10 June 2013 Post by Katie Ritson (Managing Editor, RCC) Sasaima is in the Andean hills of the Magdalena valley, in the region of Colombia called Cundinamarca; walking through these rich, green hills is an object lesson in environmental history. You can see…
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Five Minutes with a Fellow: Matt Kelly
Five Minutes with a Fellow offers a brief glimpse into what inspires researchers in the environmental humanities. The interviews feature current and former fellows from the Rachel Carson Center. Matthew Kelly is a senior lecturer in the history department of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. A historian of Ireland by training and…
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Nice Weather (If You’re a Newt)
Chaos and Resilience in Human and Natural Ecosystems Post by Kieko Matteson Spring 2013 saw some of the worst flooding in central European history. After a relentlessly rainy May, in which nearly every day of the month was marked by unseasonably cold temperatures and steady downpours, the swollen streams and water-logged soils of Germany, Austria,…
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Film Review: Plastic Planet
Post by Ellen Arnold How much plastic do you think is in your life? Probably more than you realize. Werner Boote’s documentary film Plastic Planet explores the rapid expansion of plastics production and consumption since the 1950s, bringing both a global dimension and personal, intimate perspectives into the discussion. His main goal, and one that…
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Gardening for Gardening’s Sake
Post by Jennifer Hamilton (This post is the latest in a series of reflections on Jeffrey Hou’s recent talk, “Urban Gardening as Insurgent Placemaking.” For the first piece in this series, please click here.) It “started with the park, but it has become bigger than the park” declared Turkish scholar and activist Nazan Ustundag on…
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Danube Floods Present and Past: Exploring Historic Precedents Through the Arcadia project
Post by Andreas Grieger Germany is currently experiencing record floods along some of its major rivers. Earlier this week, the Danube surpassed its historical flood mark from 1501 and reached an unprecedented height of 12.60m, flooding the entire historic district of the city of Passau. Other Central European countries are also suffering from or are…
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Urban Gardening, “Treibstoff,” and The Desire for Community
What would you get if you mixed together “Treibstoff,” the Viennese countercultural group that parks converted trucks in disused urban spaces, and the community gardening scene described by Jeffrey Hou in his recent lecture? Both movements have attracted considerable interest of late: The members of “Treibstoff” were profiled in a documentary screened at the DOK.fest…