In the special section “Imagining Anew: Challenges of Representing the Anthropocene,” Tobias Boes examines the hermeneutic and poetic operations by which we as human beings turn our very planet into a signifier for our collective existence as a species, a process he refers to as “planetary mediation.”

In the special section “Imagining Anew: Challenges of Representing the Anthropocene,” Alexa Weik von Mossner analyzes Dale Pendell’s speculative novel The Great Bay.

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.”

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.