culture

In a special section entitled “Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities,” Sara J. Grossman reflects on the definition of disability and disabled communities within environmental humanities.

This article explores the intersections of daily life and environmental law in modern China. With comparative perspectives on analogous challenges in the United States, it reports on these critical domestic challenges for China at a pivotal moment in its reemergence as a dominant world power.

Ferran Pons Raga reviews Naturalezas en conflicto [Natures in Conflict] by José A. Cortés Vázquez.

Douglas Sheil reviews the book Traditional Forest-Related Knowledge Sustaining Communities, Ecosystems and Biocultural Diversity by John A. Parrotta and Ronald L. Trosper.

Stefan Skrimshire considers the ethical question of how to communicate with future human societies in terms of long-term disposal of radioactive fuel. He proposes that the confessional form (as propagated by Saint Augustine and critiqued by Derrida) may become increasingly pertinent to activists, artists, and faith communities making sense of humanity’s ethical commitments in deep time.

Jonathan Woolley borrows the folkloristic, East Anglia figure of Black Shuck, a devilish hound, and connects it to a narrative of the Anthropocene based on the notions of inescapable mortality, deep time, and responsibility.

The authors put forward the idea of “speculative geology” to explain the violence inherent in volcanism, drawing on three volcanic episodes and the more recent unexpected striking of magma in Iceland’s Krafla volcanic caldera.

Considering Caroline Wendling’s living artwork White Wood (2014) in northeast Scotland, the author examines the relationship between deep time, ecology, and enchantment.

The authors introduce a special section of Environmental Humanities on manifestations of deep time through places, objects, and practices, focusing on three modes through which it is encountered: enchantment, violence, and haunting.