Ten Theses on Climate Justice and Migration: Reading Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island from a Christian Social-Ethics Perspective

Reflections on Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island by Markus Vogt.

Amitav Ghosh in Munich: Inspirations, Insights, and Storytelling

In the fall of 2024, Amitav Ghosh visited the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society as part of the project “One Book—Many Worlds: Munich Reads Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh.” This exhibition emerges from the multifaceted discussion of climate change and its challenges conducted in the “One Book—Many Worlds” project and grapples with the question of the role of literary fiction in interdisciplinary academic exchange and climate communication beyond academia. Taking Amitav Ghosh’s recent writings on the global climate crisis, in particular the novel Gun Island, as a vantage point, the chapters in this exhibition engage with various aspects Gun Island from different disciplinary perspectives, drawing on storylines and narrative elements that allow a multifocal engagement with different social and ecological repercussions of climate change. Additionally, pieces from the spring 2025 taumelnd trauen, verschlungen bleiben student exhibition and winning and honorable mentions from the 2025 “Tell the Untold!” writing competition take the provocation to think creatively about the past and future of our environment and world further. Thereby, the exhibition chapters create a web of diverse thoughts on and readings of the role of storytelling for the contemporary interlinked social and environmental crises from a number of perspectives.

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About the author

Vogt, Markus

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU), Germany

Markus Vogt is the chair for Christian social ethics at LMU Munich. He studied philosophy and Catholic theology in Munich, Jerusalem, and Lucerne. He has worked for the German Advisory Council on the Environment and was head environmental advisor to the German Bishops’ Conference. He previously taught as a professor of Christian social ethics at the Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule der Salesianer Don Boscos in Benediktbeuern near Munich. In 2011–12, he held a research professorship at the Rachel Carson Center, and has been a permanent fellow there ever since.

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Miyaoi Yasuo’s Perspective on Life in Nineteenth-Century Japan: Intersecting Humans and Animals, Shared Emotions and Ethics

by Tomoya Masuda

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Arcadia, Spring 2026, no. 5

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“Yoruba Architectural Sites in Nigeria”

Joseph Adeniran Adedeji shows how the cultural meaning of Yoruba heritage sites signify hope for a harmonious coexistence between society and the nonhuman world.

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Meditations on Creation in an Era of Extinction

An excerpt from Meditations on Creation in an Era of Extinction by former Carson Fellow Kate Rigby.

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Milk and Honey: Technologies of Plenty in the Making of a Holy Land

Full text of Tamar Novick’s Milk and Honey, a environmental history of the state that centers on the intersection of technology and religion in modern Palestine/Israel.

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The Bishnoi: Revisiting Religious Environmentalism and Traditional Forest and Wildlife Management in the Thar Desert

by Amir Sohel and Farhat Naz

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Arcadia, Summer 2024, no. 10

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3. Petra Kelly: Transnational Green Politics and Dark Green Spirituality

Third chapter of Stephen Milder et al.’s virtual exhibition, Petra Kelly: Life and Legacy of a Transnational Green Activist.

Petra Kelly: Life and Legacy of a Transnational Green Activist

This exhibition considers the transnational life and legacy of the activist and cofounder of the West German Green Party, Petra Kelly. The exhibition shows how Kelly’s transatlantic childhood and education enabled her to become a transnational activist. It follows the connections to friends, companions, and fellow activists all over the globe that shaped her approach to green politics and underpinned her contributions to the peace movement. Examining how the German and international press reported on Kelly, the exhibition reflects on how her profile as a Green celebrity was shaped. An analysis of the spiritual dimensions of Kelly’s green politics demonstrates how “deep green” frameworks helped the activist to think beyond the boundaries of “politics as usual.” Finally, the exhibition looks at Kelly’s legacy, considering how her ideas and her career have resonated differently in different parts of the world.

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About the author

Nichols, Amanda M.

University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Amanda M. Nichols is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her primary research, which falls at the intersections of environmental history and religious and gender studies, focuses on the roles and contributions of women in the North American antinuclear movement. Using ethnographic research methods, her work contributes to the growing corpus of literature in intersectional environmentalism and religious studies that illuminates the contributions of women to environment-related, or environment-focused, social movements.

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Interview with Alda Balthrop-Lewis, author of Thoreau's Religion: Walden Woods, Social Justice, and the Politics of Asceticism

In this episode from the New Books Network podcast, Alda Balthrop-Lewis is interviewed on her recent book, Thoreau’s Religion: Walden Woods, Social Justice, and the Politics of Asceticism.

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Bear and Human: Facets of a Multi-Layered Relationship from Past to Recent Times, with Emphasis on Northern Europe

The full three volumes of a comprehensive work on the relationship between humans and bears.

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“Old Myths, New Bottles: Contribution to GTI Forum Big History and Great Transition.”

This short piece by former Rachel Carson Center fellow Lisa Sideris is a contribution to the Great Transition Initiative’s forum Big History and Great Transition.

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