For the special section “Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities,” Kate Wright points to a photograph of two young men laughing as their hair stands up, only to be struck by lightning moments later, as a reminder of how tragic and dangerous the cognitive illusion of human exceptionalism can be. She sees Environmental Humanities as an attempt to address the systemic pathology of a species disconnected from the conditions of its world.
In the special section “Imagining Anew: Challenges of Representing the Anthropocene,” Wolfgang Struck’s essay examines the renewed attraction to the medium of the atlas in light of representational challenges raised by the model of the Anthropocene.
Examining three natural protected areas in Ecuador and Spain, Cortes-Vazquez and Ruiz-Ballesteros offer a more nuanced understanding of the connection between different regulatory regimes and the formation of environmental subjects, using a phenomenological approach that places more emphasis on the agency of the people subjected to conservation.
In this commentary piece, the six authors attempt to “reboot” or reinstitute a concept close to the heart of the Moderns, namely the assumption that the traditional concept of nature, as developed through modern European history, would no longer be adequate to a future beset by environmental crises.
The Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES) promotes interdisciplinary environmental studies, especially work in the environmental humanities. The network is supported by NordForsk, and is based in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland.
This book explores the development of ecocriticism in the context of Canadian literary studies.
The European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and Environment (EASLCE) promotes research and education in the fields of literary, cultural and environmental studies, and aims to cultivate a better understanding of the interrelationship between natures and cultures for a more sustainable future.
Andrew Mark describes Bob Wiseman’s allegorical piece, Uranium, arguing that it accesses emotion to alter the consciousness of percipients.
Gordon M. Sayre explores the metaphor of a species as a book, represented in the Alexandrian library. He argues that this obscures the fact that the Alexandrian library consisted of manuscripts, not print books and that, in essence, species may be more like manuscripts than books after all.
Stefan Helmreich’s foreword to a Special Section on Familiarizing the Extraterrestrial / Making Our Planet Alien, edited by Istvan Praet and Juan Francisco Salazar, concludes that the anthropology of outer space these days is a machine for chaotic and cosmic travel, chrono-synclastic infundibulation, and analogical involution, a wrinkle in the discipline and its companion fields that changes what can count as both the “environment” and the “humanities.”
