“Australia Burning”
In this Springs article, historian Tom Griffiths considers Australia’s devastating 2019 and 2020 bushfires and the cultural and worldwide impact they had.
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bushfire
Fire: A Brief History
This book packs into one slender volume a sweeping tale of fire, and humanity’s interactions with fire, from prehistory to the dawn of the twenty-first century.
"Deep Time and Disaster: Black Saturday and the Forgotten Past"
Christine Hansen uses the concept of deep time to challenge the idea that never-before-witnessed events are unprecedented. Using the case of a massive firestorm in 2009 in southeast Australia, she calls into question the shallow temporal frames through which deep time environmental phenomena are understood in Australian settler culture and offers an insight into often unnoticed ways in which contemporary society struggles with the colonial legacy.
Wildfire Stories: Framing a Complicated Relationship
Arcadia, Summer 2016, no. 7
The Great Peshtigo Fire
On 8 October 1871 a brush fire took hold of northeastern Wisconsin that destroyed acres upon acres of woodland areas and settlements and took up to 1,500 lives.
Unruly Paradise—Nature and Culture in Malibu, California
Looking at nature and culture in Malibu, California, this paper looks at how natural processes occurring in rapid succession—over months and years—have been subject to efforts to turn the area into a tame and orderly garden as part of a linear understanding of progress, closely linked to civility and the cultivation of nature.
The Great Fire of 1910
A massive wildfire, commonly referred to as the Big Blowup, ravished 3 million acres of woods and burned down everything in its path. In response to the devastation the US Forest Service changed their fire management strategies and policies.
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"Ghosts of the Past: Where does Environmental History Begin?"
The present environment of Australia represents a palimpsest which records a history of past climates, nutrient poor soils, burning, and increasing aridity. The details of the history are not readily disentangled…
"Ash Wednesday" bushfires
Bushfires devastate large areas of Victoria and South Australia and kill seventy-one people.
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