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In “Another Silent Spring,” historian Donald Worster explains how human relations with other animals, wild and domestic, is at the core of a majority of epidemics.

Another Silent Spring

In this virtual exhibition, historian Donald Worster explains how human relations with other animals, wild and domestic, are at the core of a majority of epidemics. In the face of the current coronavirus crisis, he argues that an exclusive focus on human life and economy will keep neither the planet nor ourselves healthy. We must decide “whether we humans can or want to restore and protect the health, not just of ourselves, but also of the planet.”

by Donald Worster

About the author

Worster, Donald

Renmin University of China

Donald Worster is one of the founders of, and leading figures in, the field of environmental history. He is currently Distinguished Foreign Expert and senior professor in the School of History of Renmin University of China.

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Pandemics in Context

What can we learn from human responses to epidemics and pandemics in history? What insights can ecological and environmental humanities perspectives provide? This new and growing collection of annotated links to open-access media (analyses, primary sources, and digital resources) helps put pandemics in context.

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"Making Live and Letting Die: Cancerous Bodies between Anthropocene Necropolitics and Chthulucene Kinship"

With a focus on global cancer epidemics, Nina Lykke discusses biopolitics in the Anthropocene against the background of a notion of dual governmentality, implying that efforts to make populations live and tendencies to let them die are intertwined.

Read more about "Making Live and Letting Die: Cancerous Bodies between Anthropocene Necropolitics and Chthulucene Kinship"

A Killer Air: Delineating Disaster in Mexico City

by Ela Miljkovic

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Arcadia, Autumn 2019, no. 45

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"Toxic Bodies: Ticks, Trans Bodies, and the Ethics of Response-Ability in Art and Activist Writing"

Tracing ticks in two different artworks and Leslie Feinberg’s activist writing, Wibke Straube takes their lead in this article from philosopher Donna Haraway and her suggestion to think about engagement with the environment through an “ethics of response-ability.”

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"Disabilities"

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.

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"Weak Seed and a Poisoned Land: Slow Violence and the Toxic Infrastructures of War in South Lebanon"

Through ethnographic fieldwork in southern Lebanon, Vasiliki Touhouliotis examines the 2006 Lebanon-Israeli war’s environmental impact.

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Painting: “The St. Petersburg Flood of 1824”

Fedor Yakovlevich Alekseev’s painting of Karuselnaya square (now Teatralnaya square) during the 1824 flood.

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Pollution and Industrialization of the Neva and Viennese Danube in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

In this chapter of their virtual exhibition “‘Commanding, Sovereign Stream’: The Neva and the Viennese Danube in the History of Imperial Metropolitan Centers,” the authors discuss similarities and differences in the history of water supply, pollution, and waste management in St. Petersburg and Vienna.

“Commanding, Sovereign Stream”:
The Neva and the Viennese Danube in the History of Imperial Metropolitan Centers

The exhibition aims to reveal and visualize the power of mighty rivers so crucially important for the history of St. Petersburg and Vienna—the major imperial centers of continental Europe in the modern era.

Gertrud Haidvogl, Alexei Kraikovski, and Julia Lajus

About the author

Haidvogl, Gertrud

Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management (IHG), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Austria

Gertrud Haidvogl studied history at the University of Vienna. She works at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, and is specialized in the history of riverine landscapes and historical changes of fish populations. Haidvogl is a member of the Center for Environmental History Vienna.

Kraikovski, Alexei

Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History at National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia

Alexei Kraikovski graduated from St. Petersburg University and got his PhD in history from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2005. He is Associate Professor of History and Senior Research Fellow at at the Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History at National Research University Higher School of Economics. His research interests include marine environmental history, urban history, the history of urban rivers, economic history, historical geography, and resource studies.

orcid.org/0000-0002-1355-7954

Lajus, Julia

Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History at National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia

Julia Lajus has a Candidate of Science degree (Russian PhD degree) from the Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences. She is Associate Professor of History and Leading Research Fellow at at the Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History at National Research University Higher School of Economics. Her research interests include the environmental history of biological resources, especially in marine and polar areas, and the history of field sciences such as fisheries and oceanography. Julia Lajus served as the vice president of the European Society of Environmental History (ESEH) from 2011-2015.