Triumphalism and Unruliness during the Construction of the Panama Canal
This paper considers the construction of the Panama Canal in order to analyze the confluence of imperialism, modernity, and environmental control.
imperialism
British Views on the Indian and Ottoman Famines: Politics, Culture, and Morality
British perceptions of the 1874 famines in India and the Ottoman Empire were shaped by discourses that defined these regions as spaces of absence, scarcity, wilderness, or empty land in desperate need of colonial investment and opportunity.
The Ukrainian Famine "Holodomor": Natural Disaster or Genocide?
In 1932, the Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin enacts policies in Ukraine that seek to decimate nationalist aspirations for independence and force collectivization on the peasantry. These measures amplified into a grand famine and led to the death of an estimated 3.5 million people.
Themes:
Environment, Power and Injustice: A South African History
This book presents the socio-environmental history of black people around Kuruman, on the edge of the Kalahari in South Africa.
"Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species"
Anna Tsing’s essay opens a door to multispecies landscapes as protagonists for histories of the world.
Anya Zilberstein on "Count Rumford and the Landscape of Munich's English Garden"
Anya Zilberstein, Carson Fellow from February 2012 until July 2012, talks about her project on prison gardens, especially the work of Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson), who designed Munich’s English Garden in the late eighteenth century.
Bailes, Kendall E., ed., Environmental History: Critical Issues in Comparative Perspective
This book is a collection of papers from one of the first major US conferences on environmental history, which took place 1–3 January 1982 at the University of California’s Irvine campus, and brought together over 100 scholars active in the field.
The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence: Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline among Northwest Coast Indians 1774–1874
An investigation into the introduction of European diseases to native peoples on the Pacific Northwest coast (North America).
Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity
A cultural critique of zoos that seeks to problematize their role as a sanctuary for animals.