Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Food for an Abundant Future
By Pollyanna Rhee: “The future of farming. The future of food.€ The website for Kernza® displays little modesty about its ambitions. It’s not a surprise that the producer of a good meant for the consumer market would be hyperbolic in their promises, but others have found the claim enticing. “Could Superwheat Kernza Save Our Soil?€…
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Cities Under Water: Valencia, Spain, and Urban Flooding
By Paul Josephson: On 29 October 2024, residents of the town of Paiporta (pop. 27,000), about eight kilometers from Valencia’s city center, saw a “tsunami€ of mud and debris catapulting down toward them. At least 60 people died in Paiporta, and a total of 222 individuals died in the region. The area is prone to…
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Russian Environmental Politics: Reading Between the Lines—New Climate, New Strategy: Betting on the Revival of Mammoths over the End of Fossil Fuels
By Vita Lacis: On 26 October 2023, Vladimir Putin signed a revised version of the Climate Doctrine of the Russian Federation—a high-profile document that determines the climate policies of the state on all levels, from international to municipal. Although only an updated version of the previous climate doctrine, released in 2009, the Doctrine illuminates the…
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Book Review: Elizabeth Hennessy, On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galápagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden
By Rodrigo Salido Moulinié The reports said they wanted to kill the turtle. They surrounded the research station and refused to let supplies go through to the 33 people—and the colony of reptiles—inside the building. Yet the fishermen went on strike and took the building not because they hated that turtle (they did not even…
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Book review: Fire: A Brief History (Second Edition) by Stephen J. Pyne
This book review was written by Annika Spenger, one of the students in the Environmental Studies Certificate Program at the Rachel Carson Center. By Annika Spenger “We are truly a species touched by fire€ (p. 24)—Stephen J. Pyne’s book Fire: A Brief History focuses on exactly this relationship of mankind, fire, and nature. Published as…
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Ecopolis Munich: Environmental Stories of Discovery
The student exhibition “Ecopolis Munich: Environmental Stories of Discovery€ sheds light on the relationship between Munich’s residents and their urban environment. The exhibition was on display from 12 to 20 October 2019 at the whiteBOX in the Werksviertel Mitte. The practical seminar leading to the production of the exhibition also received LMU’s prize for innovative…
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Bookshelf: The Breakthrough of Environmental History
Review of Stormflod by Bo Poulsen (Aarhus University Press, 2019) By Katie Ritson This book is volume 24 in the high profile series “100 Histories of Denmark€ published by Aarhus University Press, which over eight years will see a range of historians present the hundred most important historical events and topics from Danish history. The…
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2020 Visions for Environmental History: Making Environmental History as Global as Possible
This is the fourth post in a series on “2020 Visions for Environmental History€ being published jointly by NiCHE’s blog The Otter ~ La loutre and Rachel Carson Center’s blog Seeing the Woods, with posts by Lisa Mighetto, Alan MacEachern, Arielle Helmick, and Claudia Leal. The series developed alongside a session of the same name at the World Congress for Environmental History in late July.…
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Environmental Histories—Environmental Futures: Perspectives from Germany and Italy
Workshop Report (17-21 June 2019, Villa Vigoni, Italy) By Claudio de Majo June 2019 saw a group of German and Italian scholars come together in the German-Italian Cultural Center of Excellence Villa Vigoni to discuss national perspectives on environmental history. The event was convened by Roberta Biasillo (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm), Serenella Iovino…