On the trail of the Port Essington Expedition: Ludwig Leichhardt’s legacy in northern Australia

In this chapter of the virtual exhibition “Ludwig Leichhardt: A German Explorer’s Letters Home from Australia,” cultural studies researcher Heike Hartmann writes about the legacy of Dr. Leichhardt and his expeditions in Australia.

Ludwig Leichhardt: A German Explorer’s Letters Home from Australia

Seventeen letters sent by Ludwig Leichhardt from 1842–48 vividly depict his stay in Australia. In this exhibition curated by historian Heike Hartmann, we are introducing a brand new English translation of the letters and a timeline tool with which to view those, this virtual exhibition documents Leichhardt’s adventurous stay in Australia and opens up new perspectives for the environmental history of the land, Europeans’ engagement with its indigenous population, and international scientific networks at the time.

Heike Hartmann

About the author

Hartmann, Heike

Deutsches Historisches Museum, Germany

Heike Hartmann is a museum curator and researcher in the field of cultural studies with a focus on visual culture, postcolonial criticism, and the transcultural history of science and archives. She was a member of the ATN-DAAD research project “Leichhardt’s Legacies: Locating the Disappeared,” curator of the exhibition “‘Gut möglich, dass meine Knochen für immer auf den Ebenen dieser Kolonie bleichen werden’: Der Australienforscher Ludwig Leichhardt” (Marstall Schloss Branitz, Cottbus, 2013), and editor of the accompanying volume Ludwig Leichhardt: Spuren eines Verschollenen.

Heike Hartmann is currently curating an exhibition on German colonialism at Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. She has contributed to a number of exhibitions, including Bilder verkehren: Postkarten in der visuellen Kultur des deutschen Kolonialismus (2005) and Karl May—Imaginary Journeys (2007), and she is coeditor of the volume Menschen—Orte—Zeiten: Fotografie am Deutschen Historischen Museum (2009).

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The Church Rock Uranium Mill Spill

On July 16, 1979 the United Nuclear Corporation’s Church Rock uranium mill disposal pond ruptured through its dam and contaminated the Puerco River in New Mexico and parts of Navajo Country.

Tags:

air pollution

diseases

health

indigenous peoples

Themes:

Landscape Transformation

Pollution

Regions:

United States

Arizona

Cahokia: America’s Ancient Metropolis

The ancient Native American city of Cahokia supported an estimated 20,000 residents at its height and featured scores of earthen mounds. However, by 1400 it was abandoned.

Tags:

Themes:

Landscape Transformation

Regions:

The Alta Dam Controversy

The Sami people—an indigenous people of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia—lead a series of peaceful protests against the building of a dam on the Alta River in Norway.

Tags:

Themes:

Environmental Movements

Environmental Politics

Landscape Transformation

Regions:

Norway

Nuclear colonialism

In this chapter of the online exhibition “Representing Environmental Risks in the Landscapes of US Militarization,” literary scholar Hsuan L. Hsu writes about the impacts of US nuclear testing.

Representing Environmental Risk in the Landscapes of US Militarization

This virtual exhibition curated by literary scholar Hsuan Hsu examines the environmental impact of US military activities worldwide and how activists have used art and other forms of representational media to convey the harmful effects of militarization on the local population and landscape.

Hsuan Hsu

About the author

Hsu, Hsuan L.

University of California, Davis, USA

is an associate professor of English at the University of California, Davis and the author of Literature and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Cambridge) and Sitting in Darkness: Mark Twain’s Asia and Comparative Racialization (NYU, forthcoming). He has published articles on cultures of environmental risk in Jump Cut, Discourse, Daedalus, and New Literary History and co-edited a special issue of Discourse on the topic of “Environment, Race, and Representation.”

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Minding the Gap: Working Across Disciplines in Environmental Studies

About this issue

This volume of RCC Perspectives considers what it means to work across disciplines in environmental studies and how such projects can best be realized.

Content

What Would Indigenous Taxonomy Look Like? The Case of Blandowski's Australia

by Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll

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Arcadia, 2014, no. 12

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Seeing the National Park from Outside It: On an African Epistemology of Nature

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Perspectives Issue 2014/1

This paper explores the concept of “nature” from the perspective of African meanings and practices that were criminalised as poaching during and after the colonial moment.

The Tropical Andes: Where Multiple Visions of Nature Co-exist

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Perspectives Issue 2013/7

The close coexistence of multiple worldviews, which I identify in their most extreme incarnations as indigenous and mestizo, are key to understanding the environmental history of the Tropical Andes from the nineteenth century.

Local Effects of Global Forest Conservation Policy: On Zapotec Resistance against a Protected Natural Area

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Perspectives Issue 2012/5

This article looks at the controversial issue of forest conservation in the Southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.