Full article from ICEHO’s series “Notes from the Icehouse.”
Chapter 2 from Helen Rozwadowski’s virtual exhibition, “Oceans in Three Paradoxes: Knowing the Blue through the Humanities.”
What can the humanities reveal about people’s interconnections with the ocean, past and present? In 1975, the maritime historian Benjamin Labaree offered an influential argument that the Atlantic acted simultaneously as bridge and moat for European settlers of North America. The paradox of these overlapping functions provided a touchstone for understanding the maritime realm, but it is time to recognize the ocean as more than the flat surface implied by it. Two further pairings, repository–mirror and destination–home, testify to the duration of the human connections with the sea, including its depths, and also to the distinct ocean relationships forged by different cultures. The blue humanities provide a mooring for considering not only the ocean’s past and present but its future as well.
Helen M. Rozwadowski
Joshua L. Reid concludes that the history of Pacific whaling has undergone a scholarly renaissance.
Billie Lythberg and Wayne Ngata explore what it means to be whale people in the modern whaling period.
Bathsheba Demuth looks at the value of whales for indigenous peoples around the Bering Strait.
Vicki Luker details the important role played by tabua—or whales’ teeth—in Fijian history.
Excerpt from Mark R. Stoll’s Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism.
Chapters from Timothy J. Killeen’s book A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness.
This book is an exploration of the environmental makings and contested historical trajectories of environmental change in Turkey.
