Lawrence Culver reflects on his time as a Carson Fellow in Munich, examining the similarities and differences that Munich and his
Thomas Lekan examines the history of wildlife conservation through the figure of Bernhard Grzimek and the creation of the Serengeti as a protected tourist landscape.
Sarah Cameron examines her experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Russian Far East, focusing on local practices of food production and environmental adaptation.
Sherry Johnson examines how lived experiences of hurricanes in Miami shape both collective memory and her scholarly trajectory in environmental history.
Reflections on Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island by Julia Ludewig.
In the fall of 2024, Amitav Ghosh visited the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society as part of the project “One Book—Many Worlds: Munich Reads Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh.” This exhibition emerges from the multifaceted discussion of climate change and its challenges conducted in the “One Book—Many Worlds” project and grapples with the question of the role of literary fiction in interdisciplinary academic exchange and climate communication beyond academia. Taking Amitav Ghosh’s recent writings on the global climate crisis, in particular the novel Gun Island, as a vantage point, the chapters in this exhibition engage with various aspects Gun Island from different disciplinary perspectives, drawing on storylines and narrative elements that allow a multifocal engagement with different social and ecological repercussions of climate change. Additionally, pieces from the spring 2025 taumelnd trauen, verschlungen bleiben student exhibition and winning and honorable mentions from the 2025 “Tell the Untold!” writing competition take the provocation to think creatively about the past and future of our environment and world further. Thereby, the exhibition chapters create a web of diverse thoughts on and readings of the role of storytelling for the contemporary interlinked social and environmental crises from a number of perspectives.
About This Exhibition
David Frank, Paul Robinson, and Wally Samuel highlight how the Ahousaht Nation navigates fish farming by balancing economic benefits, environmental stewardship, and cultural values through local governance and negotiated agreements.
Camilla Brattland and Dorothee Schreiber emphasize that, despite varying stances on salmon farming, Indigenous communities share a commitment to protecting wild salmon, asserting their rights and perspectives, and promoting collaborative decision-making locally and globally.
Bjarne Johansen advocates for the restoration of coastal Sami fishing rights and stricter limits on river and salmon farming practices to protect wild salmon, cultural traditions, and fjord communities from environmental and regulatory harm.
(Dis)Empowered Communities promises to challenge consolidated, and often misleading, ideas about the fate of obsolete nuclear facilities, as Davide Orsini explains in an interview with historian Uwe Lübken.
Amrita Dasgupta shows how the littoral sex workers of the Mongla brothel struggle to make a livelihood in the face of climate change.
