In the special section “Provocations,” ten authors map the common ground between ecocriticism and environmental history, with the goal of enabling close interdisciplinary cooperation.
Periodicals
“Mapping Common Ground: Ecocriticism, Environmental History, and the Environmental Humanities”
"The Anthropocene and the Environmental Humanities: Extending the Conversation"
In the special section “Provocations,” Noel Castree reviews the growing stream of publications authored by humanists about the Holocene’s proclaimed end. He argues that these publications evidence environmental humanists as playing two roles with respect to the geoscientific claims they are reacting to: the roles of “inventor-discloser” or “deconstructor-critic.”
"Laudato si' and the Postsecularism of the Environmental Humanities"
Handley’s article for the Special Commentary section explores Pope Francis’s Laudato si’, questioning the postsecularity of the environmental humanities and the continued dismissal of spiritual and religious discourse in the context of establishing an environmental ethos.
"Bad Flowers: The Implications of a Phytocentric Deconstruction of the Western Philosophical Tradition for the Environmental Humanities"
In this review essay, Jennifer Hamilton responds to Michael Marder’s book, Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013), exploring three of Marder’s concepts, plant “nourishment,” “desire” and “language,” through readings of Gabrielle de Vietri’s installation The Garden of Bad Flowers (2014), the story of Daphne from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE) and Alice’s encounter with talking flowers in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871).
“The Armchair Traveler’s Guide to Digital Environmental Humanities”
Finn Arne Jørgensen brings Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s analysis of the relationship between technology, media, and the perception of landscape into the digital age as a way of examining the spatiality of digital media and the natural world.
"Is that Gun for the Bears? The National Park Service Ranger as a Historically Contradictory Figure"
Alice B. Kelly Pennaz traces the complex history of the United States (US) Park Ranger through time to show how the Ranger as an outward embodiment of state power has been contradicted by administrative and practical logics directing rangers to educate, welcome, and guide park visitors.
"Down to Earth: Geosocialities and Geopolitics"
Palsson and Swanson’s article explores the relationship between geology and social life in the Anthropocene, using the notion of “geosocialities.”
"Notes on Mineral Evolution: Life, Sentience, and the Anthropocene"
Paul Gillen explores the role of conscious human agency leading up to the Anthropocene, suggesting that the development of sentience in the Phanerozoic eon exerted an influence on the interaction of minerals and life.
"Rot"
Lorimer’s article for the Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities section discusses rot as a natural process avoided by modern humans, focusing particularly on processes of urbanization in contrast to the nurturing of rot that takes place among natural scientists and managers.
"Future"
This article for the Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities section explores the way that humans have conceptualized the future, and how this conceptualization has shaped humanity’s interactions with nature.