JENNIFER E. TELESCA Planetary stewardship, I hope, is mindful of “it.” How we write about, talk about, teach about, scientifically render, develop policy for, and advocate on behalf of sea creatures matters at a time of mass extinction. Surely a living being cannot be “it.” Mere semantics this is not. Simple in approach, trim in … More Cultivating care for one of the ocean’s most majestic creatures
EDITORS’ STATEMENT BY NICK ESTES AND JASKIRAN DHILLON Standing Rock marked a turning point for Indigenous resistance on Turtle Island. And although the camps had been forcefully evicted by police two weeks after Donald Trump took office, the struggle continues. While temperatures rise worldwide and the rightward global authoritarian turn intensifies, there are signs of … More Standing Rock and the eternal fight for decolonization and freedom across the world.
Vanessa Daws, #pluralizetheanthropocene STEVE MENTZSt. John’s University A few weeks ago in late July, a tropical rainstorm cascaded onto my home in Connecticut. During high summer in the northeastern United States, violent thunderstorms often roll through after steamy afternoons. But we weren’t prepared for the speed and volume of water that fell in a few … More Finding the human and the posthuman in the Anthropocene.
Recent events on Hawai’i’s Big Island represent the latest in a nearly decade-long dispute between Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) and settler colonial forces seeking to build the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea. Kanaka Maoli have resisted the construction of TMT on the summit, one of the most sacred sites … More Mauna Kea: "More than just a list of physical attributes."
BY DAVID FARRIER Life itself is a form of poiesis, a perpetual world-making. But if eco-criticism also sees the poem as an exercise in world-making, how are we to read it in an age of extinction? Perhaps more than any other environmental crisis, extinction pitches us into deep time: into awareness of the richness of … More Poetry and Extinction in the Anthropocene
BY NICOLE SEYMOURCalifornia State University, Fullerton Many of us have had that particular social media experience: we read a post railing against a behavior or taking a self-righteous stand on an issue and feel “called out.” Do I do that? Am I part of the problem? Are they talking about me?! I had this experience … More Quitting the environmental shame game.
BY JOHN HULTGRENBennington College Academics are typically tasked with giving complex accounts of complex situations. We specialize in stories of nuance, where power operates with such subtlety that its movement through the social body requires explaining and unmasking. Simple explanations are to be suspect, as are prescriptions for immediate action. There are moments, however, when … More Children. Before. Borders.
BY CARY J. GRIFFITHAuthor of Gunflint Burning Eleven years ago this month, the most destructive wildfire in modern Minnesota history at the time rallied more than one thousand firefighters, consumed 75,000 acres of forest, with firefighting costs around $11 million and structure losses estimated to top $100 million. Writing about the Ham Lake fire was … More From environmental impact to community saviors, here are seven things you might not know about one of the largest wildfires in Minnesota history.
BY SHEILA WATT-CLOUTIER The world has come to know the wildlife of the Arctic more than its people: The Inuit. For two decades my life’s work, which includes elected positions with an international mandate to protect the rights and interests of our people of the circumpolar world, has been to work diligently to put a … More Earth Day 2018: Facing the greatest human-rights challenge of our time.
BY JOANNA ZYLINSKA The apocalypse is back—with a vengeance! Cue the visually intriguing Altered Carbon on Netflix, the conceptually teasing yet disappointingly humanist Humans on Channel 4 in the UK, and the just plain terrible Blade Runner 2049 (surely a crime against cinema, if not against humanity). But let me make what might seem like … More The End of Man, One More Time.
