Through readings of the works of artist/sculptor Ilana Halperin and poet Alice Oswald, David Farrier explores the idea of Anthropocene as marked by haunted time.
John Ryan examines biopoetry experiments that encoded poetry into DNA, asking if biopoetry and the encipherment process are conceptual and methodological experimentations, or if they reflect ecological consciousness and ethical imperative for life.
In the special section “Imagining Anew: Challenges of Representing the Anthropocene,” Alexa Weik von Mossner analyzes Dale Pendell’s speculative novel The Great Bay.
Anna Svenson considers the epistemological implications of the digitization of the Directors’ Correspondence (DC) collection (1841-1928) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She concludes that care is needed to avoid replicating the invisible losses of extractive approaches to knowledge production, particularly in the context of collection-based biodiversity conservation.
For the special section “Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities,” Kate Wright points to a photograph of two young men laughing as their hair stands up, only to be struck by lightning moments later, as a reminder of how tragic and dangerous the cognitive illusion of human exceptionalism can be. She sees Environmental Humanities as an attempt to address the systemic pathology of a species disconnected from the conditions of its world.
In the special section “Imagining Anew: Challenges of Representing the Anthropocene,” Wolfgang Struck’s essay examines the renewed attraction to the medium of the atlas in light of representational challenges raised by the model of the Anthropocene.
Examining three natural protected areas in Ecuador and Spain, Cortes-Vazquez and Ruiz-Ballesteros offer a more nuanced understanding of the connection between different regulatory regimes and the formation of environmental subjects, using a phenomenological approach that places more emphasis on the agency of the people subjected to conservation.
In this commentary piece, the six authors attempt to “reboot” or reinstitute a concept close to the heart of the Moderns, namely the assumption that the traditional concept of nature, as developed through modern European history, would no longer be adequate to a future beset by environmental crises.
The Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES) promotes interdisciplinary environmental studies, especially work in the environmental humanities. The network is supported by NordForsk, and is based in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland.
This book explores the development of ecocriticism in the context of Canadian literary studies.
