Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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The Uses of Environmental History: John R. McNeill
By John R. McNeill: Environmental or ecological historians do not “need to become more useful and practical€ in anything. They should feel free to be useless as regards global problems if they wish. If their motives for engaging in environmental history are nothing loftier than curiosity, that is no sin. The great majority of historical…
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Snapshot: Do You Speak Envhist?
Should professional historians maintain their independence and objectivity as researchers, or should they address the social use of their field? Are there fundamental conflicts between the two? Do environmental or ecological historians need to become more useful and practical in addressing such global problems as climate change, intensified food production, and biodiversity loss? If so,…
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Making Tracks: Paul Sutter
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 Paul Sutter There was nothing about my childhood that inclined me towards the environmental humanities—except, perhaps, the entire context in which I…
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Paradigm Shifts in Environmental Thinking: Autonomous Nature by Carolyn Merchant
by Yan Gao Carolyn Merchant’s book Autonomous Nature traces paradigmatic shifts in environmental thinking from a long-term perspective. Derived from her ever-enduring interest in and perpetual investigations of chaos and complexity theories, Merchant probes into the roots and evolution of the terms natura naturans (“Nature naturing,€ or nature creating, evolving, and changing) and natura naturata…
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Toward a Beautiful Rural Life
by Zhen Wang Jenny Chio’s book A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China attracted me because of its connection to my current research project at the Rachel Carson Center. One of the reasons for this is that we share the same research area—southwest China. My own research focuses on the…
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Environmental Knowledge and Environmental Politics in the “Post-Truth€ Era
by Jonathan Clapperton and Liza Piper Nearly one year has passed since we wrote the introduction to the recently released RCC Perspectives volume titled “Environmental Knowledge, Environmental Politics: Case Studies from Canada and Western Europe.€ At the time, we wrote in an atmosphere of environmental and progressive social activist optimism: the Paris Agreement had just…
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Doktorandentag 2016
By Anja Rieser and Ivan Vilovic With topics ranging from earthquakes to the League of Nations, greenhouse gases to photography, in fields as diverse as politics, law, geography, and art, the doctoral students at the Rachel Carson Center are a truly interdisciplinary group. On 7 November they convened for a “Doktorandentag,€ a day of presentations…
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Marriage Trees
“My Tree in Another’s Backyard€ By Anna Leah Tabios Hillebrecht The first half of September found me in Santa Fe, Argentina, as part of the academic exchange on Transatlantic Perspectives on the Rights of Nature, cosponsored by BayLat and the Rachel Carson Center. It was my first time in South America and I was determined to…
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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…