Unbetitelt

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Urban Environments Initiative: Virtual Workshop Report: Spaces of Living in Transformation—In Times of Uncertainty

A residential view of Naples, Italy. Photo by Bertrand Gabioud via Unsplash By Carolin Maertens and Daniel Dumas The Urban Environments Initiative (UEI) is a collaborative venture between the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), the Technische Universität München (TUM), the University of Cambridge, and New York University, and includes members from a variety of other international…

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Re:Thinking the Urban: UEI Workshop Report

The Isarauen (Courtesy of Jan Antonin Kolar via Unsplash) By Daniel Dumas and Carolin Maertens 22 January 2021 The Urban Environments Initiative (UEI) held its third workshop entitled Re:Thinking the Urban on 22 January 2021. The online workshop brought UEI members from across the globe together for an in-depth analysis and discussion regarding two case studies of “spaces of living in…

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Why Ecocriticism Needs the Social Sciences (and Vice Versa)

Tools Used in Connection with the Soil by May Rivers, from the Fruit Grower’s Guide (vintage illustration digitally enhanced by rawpixel, and modified here by the authors), CC BY-SA 4.0 By Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, W.P. Malecki, and Frank Hakemulder: Knowing that you need to tell a new story does not always mean that you know what to say, or how to say it. This is the…

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Studying Scientists in Their Natural Habitat

The author interviewing Monika Schillat (Photograph courtesy of Fern Hames) By Melissa Haeffner Growing up in a small suburb in the United States, my dream was to move to the big city, to agilely navigate through shoulder-to-shoulder masses of humanity and revel in the clashes between cultures. I didn’t pay attention to the “environment” or “nature,” and it was not a central part of my…

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Tracing Landscape Change through Dung Beetles

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The Fire Knows No Boundaries

This picture is not from the fires, but of a sacred place, Mt Yengo. It’s where Biame [a creation ancestor] stepped back into the sky. That’s why the mountain is flat. It was part of the bushfire story and is part of our Story that will outlast these times. (Source: Rob Waters) https://seeingtheforestdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/9e973-the_fire_knows_no_boundaries.mp3 By Rob Waters The…

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The Anglophone Dilemma in the Environmental Humanities

© Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash By Dan Finch-Race and Katie Ritson Transnational discussions of the climate crisis generally use English as a primary language so as to facilitate direct communication among a high number of stakeholders. The primacy of English is clear for the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“version complète disponible en anglais seulement,” the French list…

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Masking Our Uncertainties: “The Way of the Masks”

Masking Our Uncertainties: “The Way of the Masks”

Reproduced with permission © Ranjan Kaul By Rita Brara A mask does not exist in isolation; it presupposes other real or potential masks by its side, masks that might have been chosen in its stead and substituted for it.-Claude Levi-Strauss, The Way of the Masks An overwhelming sense of uncertainty fogs the Covid-19 pandemic and cityscapes in India as elsewhere in a planetary reminder of our…

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Why Ecocriticism Needs the Social Sciences (and Vice Versa)

Why Ecocriticism Needs the Social Sciences (and Vice Versa)

Tools Used in Connection with the Soil by May Rivers, from the Fruit Grower’s Guide (vintage illustration digitally enhanced by rawpixel, and modified here by the authors), CC BY-SA 4.0 By Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, W.P. Malecki, and Frank Hakemulder Knowing that you need to tell a new story does not always mean that you know what to say, or how to say it. This is the…

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The Great Blasket Island, Storytelling, and the Environment

By Matthias Egeler and Anna Pilz We are standing on the headland of Dunmore Head on the western edge of Dingle Peninsula, on the western edge of Ireland, on the western edge of Europe.

Mount Eagle seen from Dunmore Head. © Matthias Egeler By Matthias Egeler and Anna Pilz We are standing on the headland of Dunmore Head on the western edge of Dingle Peninsula, on the western edge of Ireland, on the western edge of Europe. One moment, the slope is speckled with light, the next it is in the shadow of a heavy rain cloud. Then the winds push away the rain leaving behind a sparkling…

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Reclaiming Oktoberfest: Celebrating Sustainability Instead of Consumerism

Reclaiming Oktoberfest: Celebrating Sustainability Instead of Consumerism

On a sunny day, tens of thousands of people flock to the ‘Theresienwiese’ festival grounds. Source: Pixabay By Elmar Ujszaszi-Müller (Guest edited by Anna Antonova) Every year in late September, the atmosphere in Munich becomes thicker when Oktoberfest takes place. The intense odors of roasted almonds and grilled chicken mingle with those of specially brewed lager and the sweat of thousands of…

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Re:Thinking the Urban: UEI Workshop Report

Re:Thinking the Urban: UEI Workshop Report

The Isarauen (Courtesy of Jan Antonin Kolar via Unsplash) By Daniel Dumas and Carolin Maertens 22 January 2021 The Urban Environments Initiative (UEI) held its third workshop entitled Re:Thinking the Urban on 22 January 2021. The online workshop brought UEI members from across the globe together for an in-depth analysis and discussion regarding two case studies of “spaces of living in…

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A Sketch for Teaching the Anthropocene in the Alps)

A Sketch for Teaching the Anthropocene in the Alps)

The author and Suzie in the Austrian Alps overlooking the Steinernes Meer where she grew up. (Photo: Heidi Danzl) By Heidi E. Danzl (trans. Kristy Henderson) The Alps can be considered a hot spot for climate change due to changing growing seasons and tree lines, species migration, more intense weather events, increased glacial melt, droughts, mudslides, avalanches, flooding, and the…

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Dazzling and Dangerous: Epidemics, Space Physics, and Settler Understandings of the Aurora Borealis

Dazzling and Dangerous: Epidemics, Space Physics, and Settler Understandings of the Aurora Borealis

“Northern Lights” by Image Editor is licensed under CC BY 2.0 By Jennifer Fraser and Noah Stemeroff Earlier this year, Explore, a multimedia company that operates the largest live nature camera network on the planet, noticed that one of its livestreams was going viral. The feed in question broadcasts from Churchill, Manitoba. Positioned directly beneath the auroral oval, this camera offers…

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Resisting Climate Change Apocalypticism: Environmental Justice Activism from the South Pacific

Resisting Climate Change Apocalypticism: Environmental Justice Activism from the South Pacific

Jaluit Atoll Lagoon, Marshall Islands (Source: Keith Polya, CC BY 2.0, via flickr) By Hanna Straß-Senol In late 2013, an Australian newspaper reported that a man from Kiribati “stood to make history as the world’s first climate refugee.” The New Zealand High Court, before which the man appeared, rejected the claim because the category of climate refugee was not included under the United…

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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.

Lonesome George, Arturo de Frias Marques, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 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. [1] Yet the fishermen went on strike and took the building not because they hated that turtle (they…

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Starhawk, Henry Vaughan, and the Environmental Imagination

Starhawk, Henry Vaughan, and the Environmental Imagination

Camille Flammarion, L’Atmosphere: Météorologie Populaire. Paris: Hachette, 1888. Recoloured by Hugo Heikenwaelder, 1998, CC BY-SA 2.5.

By Zane Johnson

Times of widespread crisis often challenge conventional ways of being in and seeing the world. Sometimes these challenges take on a millenarian character, heralding the end of an epoch or the dawning of a new age. A case in point is the…

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