Environmental Humanities (journal)

Considering the role of sound in shifting conceptions of the ocean, Ritts and Shiga explore how the US Navy mimicked whale, dolphin, and popoise communication techniques during the Cold War.

Margret Grebowicz argues that James Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), in particular the time-lapse films of glaciers receding, presents a unique example of what Guy Debord calls the ”tautological” nature of spectacle, its capacity to serve as its own evidence at the same time as it becomes a mode of relation among people.

Elizabeth Callaway analyzes scientific literature on climate change, specifically from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to consider how scientific representations structure, articulate, and inform our experience of time.

Susanna Lidström and Greg Garrard trace the development of “ecopoetry” from the Romantic and deep ecological traditions of the 1980s to the complex environmental concerns of the 2010s.

Blasi shows how Terrence Malick’s film Badlands (1973) retrospectively illuminates the forces in the 1950s that contributed to present problematic human-nature relations, with attention to Malick’s images of waste and death.

Stephen Muecke’s essay for the Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities focuses on the attachment of humans and the role this attachment has in the construction of “being.”

Deane-Drummond’s article for the Special Commentary section focuses on Pope Francis’s statements about Catholicism, the environment, and social issues. She analyses how his choice of terminology and the concepts he engages set him apart from others speaking out on climate and inequality, and recognizes his contribution to environmental humanities literature.

Northcott’s article for the Special Commentary section discusses the content of Pope Francis’s Laudato si’, highlighting the economic implications of the Pope’s statements and the theological basis for them in the Christian tradition and elsewhere.

Goodchild’s article for the Special Commentary section analyzes Pope Francis’s Laudato si, focusing particularly on the concept of connectedness and the economic changes necessary for the Pope’s statements to become reality.

Harriet Ritvo’s article for the Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities section views the proliferation of introduced species as a symptom rather than a cause, and urges the identification of the real causes through a reconsideration of the morally loaded rhetoric within which biological migration and transplantation are often couched.