Aims, Methods, and Mapping

This exhibition collects wilderness-equivalent terms and describes them in a few short paragraphs, discussing how they may be similar to or different from the wilderness that native English speakers know and admire. The subtleties of meanings encompassed by the above terms, say, between human presence or absence, or between love and fear for the wild regions, is what we hope to explore. The exhibition is coordinated and edited by environmental historian Marcus Hall.

Wilderness Babel: What Does Wilderness Mean in Your Language?

What does wilderness mean in your language? Listen to words for “wilderness” and learn about their political and historical meanings in different regional contexts. “Wilderness Babel” is a collaboration with the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, edited by Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg. Its international contributions are still growing.

This version 2, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition (view PDF here) and applies the Environment & Society Portal’s responsive layout.

Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, eds.

About the author

Hall, Marcus

University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland

Marcus Hall has written about the wild, wilderness, and rewilding in his books, Earth Repair: A transatlantic history of environmental restoration (2005), and Restoration and History: The Search for a Usable Environmental Past (ed., 2010). In pursuing these and other research projects, he has now lived in Europe (mostly Italy and Switzerland) almost as many years as he has lived in the United States, where he has become even more appreciative of how environmental messages depend on the languages in which they are expressed. Trained in biology, history, and environmental studies (Stanford, BS; Wisconsin MA, PhD), he teaches at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies.

Hardenberg, Wilko Graf von

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg is a modern historian focusing on socio-political aspects of nature perception and management in Europe and the history of the environmental sciences. He holds a degree in history from the University of Torino, Italy, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Cambridge. He was a postdoc, funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento, at the University of Trento, Italy, a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, Germany, and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. His most recent research projects focus on the history of nature conservation, management, and rhetoric in the Alps and on the development of the idea of mean sea-level.

orcid.org/0000-0002-8704-6997

Browse the exhibition

About the Exhibition

This exhibition collects wilderness-equivalent terms and describes them in a few short paragraphs, discussing how they may be similar to or different from the wilderness that native English speakers know and admire. The subtleties of meanings encompassed by the above terms, say, between human presence or absence, or between love and fear for the wild regions, is what we hope to explore. The exhibition is coordinated and edited by environmental historian Marcus Hall.

Wilderness Babel: What Does Wilderness Mean in Your Language?

What does wilderness mean in your language? Listen to words for “wilderness” and learn about their political and historical meanings in different regional contexts. “Wilderness Babel” is a collaboration with the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, edited by Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg. Its international contributions are still growing.

This version 2, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition (view PDF here) and applies the Environment & Society Portal’s responsive layout.

Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, eds.

About the author

Hall, Marcus

University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland

Marcus Hall has written about the wild, wilderness, and rewilding in his books, Earth Repair: A transatlantic history of environmental restoration (2005), and Restoration and History: The Search for a Usable Environmental Past (ed., 2010). In pursuing these and other research projects, he has now lived in Europe (mostly Italy and Switzerland) almost as many years as he has lived in the United States, where he has become even more appreciative of how environmental messages depend on the languages in which they are expressed. Trained in biology, history, and environmental studies (Stanford, BS; Wisconsin MA, PhD), he teaches at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies.

Hardenberg, Wilko Graf von

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg is a modern historian focusing on socio-political aspects of nature perception and management in Europe and the history of the environmental sciences. He holds a degree in history from the University of Torino, Italy, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Cambridge. He was a postdoc, funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento, at the University of Trento, Italy, a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, Germany, and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. His most recent research projects focus on the history of nature conservation, management, and rhetoric in the Alps and on the development of the idea of mean sea-level.

orcid.org/0000-0002-8704-6997

Browse the exhibition

West Germany and the Iron Curtain: Environment, Economy, and Culture in the Borderlands

Astrid M. Eckert’s West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of Cold War Germany and the German reunification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945.

Read more about West Germany and the Iron Curtain: Environment, Economy, and Culture in the Borderlands

Water Flows and Topographic Networks of Power: Social Struggles for Water in the Copiapó Valley in the Eighteenth Century

by Francisco Astudillo Pizarro

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Arcadia, Spring 2020, no. 2

Read more about Water Flows and Topographic Networks of Power: Social Struggles for Water in the Copiapó Valley in the Eighteenth Century

Methodological Benefits of a GIS Map: The Example of the Eldgjá Eruption of the Late 930s CE and the Reliability of Historical Documents

by Stephan Ebert

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Arcadia, Spring 2019, no. 7

Read more about Methodological Benefits of a GIS Map: The Example of the Eldgjá Eruption of the Late 930s CE and the Reliability of Historical Documents

"(Re)Interpreting Exotic Plantation Forestry in 1920s New Zealand"

The author examines the role of plantation forestry through the shift within the New Zealand State Forest Service from an orthodox state forestry model to one favoring large-scale exotic plantations.

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"Spatio-temporal Visualisation and Data Exploration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge/Indigenous Knowledge"

The authors explore the implementation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Indigenous knowledge (IK) in mapping efforts, taking cues from previous spatio-temporal visualization work in the Geographic(al) Information System(s)/Science(s) GIS community, and from temporal depictions extant in existing cultural traditions.

Read more about "Spatio-temporal Visualisation and Data Exploration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge/Indigenous Knowledge"

“Global Hotspots for Tropical Forest Restoration”

Pedro Brancalion is a professor of forest restoration at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. In this presentation, he discusses the results of his research conducted in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. He applies these results to other tropical forests across the globe, stressing the importance of global restoration implementation.

Read more about “Global Hotspots for Tropical Forest Restoration”

Money in the Mangroves

This short film combines remote sensing, qualitative interviews, desk research, and illustrations to show the complexities and controversies surrounding mangrove reforestation in Senegal and The Gambia.

Read more about Money in the Mangroves

Blood in the Water: A Digital History Project on the Geography of Pontiac’s War, 1763

by Brandon Clark

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Arcadia, Autumn 2018, no. 22

Read more about Blood in the Water: A Digital History Project on the Geography of Pontiac’s War, 1763

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Aims, Methods, and Mapping

Wilderness Babel: What Does Wilderness Mean in Your Language?

About the author

Browse the exhibition

About the Exhibition

Wilderness Babel: What Does Wilderness Mean in Your Language?

About the author

Browse the exhibition