Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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The Radical Hope Syllabus 2018
This post was originally published by Radical Hope: Inspiring Sustainability Transformations Through our Past | A Group-Sourced Syllabus. It is reposted here with permission. The project is the outcome of a workshop organized by the Rachel Carson Center and the University of Texas, Austin, in 2017. Read the conference report for this event. (Featured image: Distant…
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Making Tracks: Charlie Trautmann
By Charlie Trautmann Have you ever received a paperback for Christmas from your mother-in-law that landed you a fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich? I have. My journey to the Carson Center was more like an odyssey—long and circuitous.
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Mumbai Deluge 2017: Nowadays Rain Gods Have a New Tool—Plastic Bags!
by Ayushi Dhawan We often do not think twice before buying a plastic bag at a supermarket or a shopping mall. It’s bought because it’s needed and discarded after being used for a short while. How harmful can these everyday practices be to our environment? Mumbai’s recent floods definitely have a story to tell in…
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Un trago amargo—A Bitter Drink: Beer, Water, and Globalization
By Susan Gauss A truck drives down the street in Zaragoza, Coahuila, its loudspeaker reminding residents to conserve water or face fines. Local farmers also feel the pain, as they scale back planting due to a lack of water. Yet nearby, water is flowing well through an aqueduct carrying it to a factory 40 kilometers…
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Communicating the Climate: How to Communicate Scholarly Findings on Climate and Weather in a Controversial Time
Workshop Report (Rachel Carson Center, Munich, Germany, 18 August 2017) by Katrin Kleemann On 18 August 2017, the RCC hosted a workshop on the challenges and goals of communicating climate research. The workshop was organized by two RCC doctoral candidates, Jeroen Oomen and Katrin Kleemann, and financed by the European Commission through the Marie Curie…
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Uses of Environmental History: Don Worster
This is the fourth in a series of posts exploring the uses of environmental history. The series has been adapted from contributions to a roundtable forum published in the first issue of the new Journal for Ecological History, edited by Renmin University’s Center for Ecological History. By Donald Worster If I did not believe that environmental history is already useful and…
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The Future of Wild Europe
Conference Report (The University of Leeds, UK, 12–14 September 2016) By Roger Norum A version of this report was first published 17 October 2016 on ENHANCE ITN. This three-day conference was the first of three large events for the ENHANCE ITN (The Environmental Humanities for a Concerned Europe Innovative Training Network), a three-year Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie doctoral research program…
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Snapshot: Our Future in the Anthropocene
On 15 September the Deutsches Museum hosted a Zukunftskongress (Future Congress) together with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Club of Rome; the event brought together international visionaries, experts, and activists to discuss ways to tackle problems such as climate change and hunger and move towards a more sustainable society.
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Bookshelf: The Troubled History of Environmentalism
By Bob Wilson The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation by Adam Rome The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000 by Michael Bess Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images by Finis Dunaway Why have Americans been unable or…