In the context of current concerns within the environmental humanities to challenge the idea that humans are somehow irreducible to nature, the authors in this article take up the much-neglected history of the idea of human exceptionality itself, arguing that this form of humanist discourse often forgets its own contingencies and instabilities, and its comprehensively violent inheritances.
The authors analyze the portrayal in popular conservation discourse of the flowering plant Rhododendron ponticum as an invasive species in the British countryside, especially Scotland. They explore how its invasiveness is materially produced via the cultural and socioeconomic as well as vegetal relations within which it is entangled.
Eileen Crist argues that the discourse of the Anthropocene refuses to challenge human dominion, proposing instead technological and managerial approaches that would make human dominion sustainable.
The authors develop “composting” as a metaphor for their two main arguments: that certain feminist concepts and commitments are foundational to the environmental humanities, and that more inclusive feminist composting is necessary for the future of the field.
Daniel Barber explores alternative visions of modernity in architectural projects in Brazil from the 1930s and 1940s that embraced, rather than excluded, climate.
In this chapter from the virtual exhibition “Global Environments: A 360º Visual Journey,” Jesse Peterson’s 360° video presents both an environment and posthuman character from which the human cannot be disentangled, in the context of cultural eutrophication fueled by anthropogenic sources of pollution and climate change affecting the marine environment.
Communicating global environmental issues in new and exciting ways can lead to a better public understanding of academic research. The international doctoral researchers of the ENHANCE Innovative Training Network (ITN) present their interdisciplinary projects through short, immersive videos, accompanied by analytical contextualization. These six 360º videos and one multiple-screen video triptych, shot in different countries and ecosystems, aim to bring people closer to an in situ experience of global environments, their complexities, and our relationship to them.
ENHANCE ITN
Sybille Heidenreich takes the reader on a journey through art history with an “ecological eye.” Looking at examples of Dürer, Monet, and Van Gogh, she offers insight into the emergence of present-day ecological crises and valuable food for thought on issues of sustainability.
Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene argues that the current climate crisis calls for new ways of thinking and producing knowledge, suggesting that our collective inclination has been to go on in an experimental and exploratory mode, in which we refuse to foreclose on options or jump too quickly to “solutions.”
Vital Reenchantments takes up E. O. Wilson’s Biophilia (1984), James Lovelock’s Gaia (1979), and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos (1980), to show how each work fleshes out scientific concepts with attention to “affective wonder.”
Contributing authors examine what happens when we cease to assume that only humans exert agency, by considering animals and vegetables as agents rather than mere objects.
