Shows
Absolute UnitsThe Meaning of Pigs (with Dolly Jørgensen)Content warning: This episode contains references to animal slaughter, antisemitism, and injury to children. Listener discretion is advised.Joe and Ollie continue their deep-dive into the history of pigs with Professor Dolly Jørgensen (University of Stavanger, Norway). This time, we explore the symbolism of pigs: from their significance in our myths and religious texts, to their use as a foil for thinking through what it is to be human.Delve deeper into Dolly's work in her book, The Medieval Pig: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781837651689/the-medieval-pig/See visuals from our discussion with D...2025-07-1038 minAbsolute UnitsMedieval Pigs (with Dolly Jørgensen)Content warning: This episode contains references to animal slaughter and blood. Listener discretion is advised.In medieval England, all roads led to pigs. They lived side-by-side with humans, and were a common sight in daily life.In this episode, Ollie and Joe speak to historian Dolly Jørgensen (Professor of History at University of Stavanger, Norway) about what it was like to live with pigs in medieval England: from pigs' place in homes and food systems, to the challenges required to maintain pig populations.We'll be following up with Dolly in t...2025-06-2642 min
The History HourRonald Reagan and Lonesome GeorgeMax Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Dolly Jørgensen, Professor of History at the University of Stavanger in Norway and a specialist in the history of extinction.We start in 2012 with the death of a famous Galapagos tortoise called Lonesome George, who was the last of his species.Then, the incredible tale of how an Irish priest, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, saved thousands of prisoners of war and Jews in Rome during World War 2.We hear how the Sino-Indian War of...2025-06-1450 minAbsolute UnitsSchedule Update: Big Sheep, Big DreamsEpisode 4 marked the end of our pilot series, produced by a group of extremely talented students from the University of Reading. Now, we're at the wheel planning future episodes. The tractor wheel of our mind and our dreams.In the meantime: for a shorter bonus adventure, join hosts Dr Ollie Douglas (curator) and Joe Vaughan (social media manager) as they reflect on the podcast to date. We talk about what we've learned, what we've loved, and what we're looking forward to for the future. Plus, follow us down some random tangents like the US-UK trade deal, our...2025-05-2221 min
A Meatsmith HarvestEpisode 105: Strong Immunity & Health with Real Food, Part 2In this episode, we run the gamut from sharing health resources, pathologically delicious food vs real food, and palette formation to old food traditions and recipes. We answer the question: How important is fleeing the city and starting a homestead as a Christian family? Plus plenty of rabbit trails like the importance of the medieval pig, how conventional health is fear-based, how isolating in our family is impossible, how real food isn't debatable; it's dogma, and our general health plan. Stay tuned for episodes 106 and 107 for the details of exactly how we fought pertussis without antibiotics. 2025-03-081h 01
History Extra podcastHow pigs caused a stink in medieval EnglandThey attacked children. They exhumed dead bodies. They were even thought to be in league with the devil. And yet, despite this long list of misdemeanours, pigs were an indispensable part of urban life in the Middle Ages. Speaking to Spencer Mizen, Dolly Jørgensen reveals why medieval city-dwellers were so dependent on swine – and explains what city authorities did to prevent rogue pigs from running riot.(Ad) Dolly Jørgensen is the author of The Medieval Pig (Boydell Press, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Medieval-Pig-Nature-Environment-Middle/dp/183765168X/?tag=bbch...2025-01-1336 min
HistoryExtra Long ReadsPigs in the medieval cityDolly Jørgensen considers why the pig was so vital to urban life in the Middle AgesThey killed children, exhumed dead bodies and caused an almighty stink. So why, asks this Long Read written by Dolly Jørgensen, were our medieval ancestors so dependent on the urban pig?HistoryExtra Long Reads brings you the best articles from BBC History Magazine, direct to your ears. Today’s feature originally appeared in the October 2024 issue, and has been voiced in partnership with the RNIB. Learn more abou...2024-11-1816 min
Gulf StreamsEp. 53 Rigs to ReefsWhat happens to an oil rig after it's past its prime? On today's show, we sit down with Dolly Jørgensen (University of Stavanger, Norway) to talk all about the Rigs to Reefs programs throughout the Gulf Coast. Later in the hour, our researcher Jadyn talks with Taylin Nelson (Rice University) about the environmental origins and ideas in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
2024-10-2857 min
Verden kalderHvem er Dolly Parton, og hvordan har countrydronningen ændret verden?Dolly Parton er ikke alene en countrylegende, hun bliver også hyldet som indbegrebet af en velgører og de underprivilegeredes fortaler. I dette sommerprogram undersøger ’Verden Kalder’, hvordan gik det til, at kvinden, der siger hendes udseende er inspireret af hendes landsby luder, i dag bliver tilbedt som en helgen verden over på grund af hendes velgørenhed. Og hvordan countrydronningen, der har skabt et kæmpe forretningsimperium, og siger hun er hævet over politik, alligevel formår at være dybt politisk i sine handlinger og samtidig afvæbne kritik gennem sit budskab om næstekærlighed og ydmyghed. Pro...2022-07-1850 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksBart Elmore – Seed MoneyBart Elmore, Associate Professor at Ohio State University (USA), discussed his book Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future (W. W. Norton, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 28 March 2022.
Monsanto, a St. Louis chemical firm that became the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds, merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018—but its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping the farms that feed us. When researchers found trace amounts of the firm’s blockbuster herbicide in breakfast cereal bowls, Monsanto faced public outcry. Award-winning historian Bartow J. E...2022-03-2858 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksMichael Guida – Listening to British NatureMichael Guida, Research Associate at University of Sussex, presented his book Listening to British Nature: Wartime, Radio, and Modern Life, 1914-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2022) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 21 March 2022.
Listening to British Nature: Wartime, Radio, and Modern Life, 1914-1945 reveals for the first time how the sounds and rhythms of the natural world were listened to, interpreted and used amid the pressures of early twentieth century life. The book argues that despite and sometimes because of the chaos of wartime and the struggle to recover, nature’s voices were drawn close to pr...2022-03-2156 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksDaniel Barber – Modern Architecture and ClimateDaniel Barber, Associate Professor at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, discussed his book Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning (Princeton University Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 14 March 2022.
Modern Architecture and Climate explores how leading architects of the twentieth century incorporated climate-mediating strategies into their designs, and shows how regional approaches to climate adaptability were essential to the development of modern architecture. Focusing on the period surrounding World War II—before fossil-fuel powered air-conditioning became widely available—Daniel Barber brings to light a vibrant and dynamic architectural discussio...2022-03-1456 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksCatherine Oliver – Veganism, Archives, and AnimalsCatherine Oliver, Research Associate at University of Cambridge (UK), joined the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk on Monday, 7 March 2022 to discuss her book Veganism, Archives, and Animals: Geographies of a Multispecies World (Routledge 2021).
This book explores the growing significance of veganism. It brings together important theoretical and empirical insights to offer a historical and contemporary analysis of veganism and our future co-existence with other animals.
Bringing together key concepts from geography, critical animal studies, and feminist theory this book critically addresses veganism as both a subject of study and a spatial approach to the self, so...2022-03-0753 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksLaurence Talairach – Animals, Museum Culture & Children’s LiteratureLaurence Talairach, Professor of English at University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès and associate researcher at the Alexandre Koyré Centre for the History of Science and Technology (France), talked about her book Animals, Museum Culture and Children’s Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Curious Beasties (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 21 February 2022.
This book explores the relationship between the zoological and palaeontological specimens brought back from around the world in the long nineteenth century—be they alive, stuffed or fossilised–and the development of children’s literature at this time. Children’s literature eme...2022-02-2156 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJonathan Robins – Oil PalmJonathan E. Robins, associate professor of history at Michigan Technological University, discussed his book Oil Palm: A Global History (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 14 February 2022.
Oil palms are ubiquitous—grown in nearly every tropical country, they supply the world with more edible fat than any other plant and play a role in scores of packaged products, from lipstick and soap to margarine and cookies. And as Jonathan E. Robins shows, sweeping social transformations carried the plant around the planet. First brought to the global stage in the hold...2022-02-1455 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksLiz Miller – Extraction Ecologies and the Literature of the Long ExhaustionLiz Miller, professor of English at University California, Davis (USA), presented her book Extraction Ecologies and the Literature of the Long Exhaustion (Princeton University Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 7 February 2022.
The 1830s to the 1930s saw the rise of large-scale industrial mining in the British imperial world. Elizabeth Carolyn Miller examines how literature of this era reckoned with a new vision of civilization where humans are dependent on finite, nonrenewable stores of earthly resources, and traces how the threatening horizon of resource exhaustion worked its way into narrative form.
Br...2022-02-0753 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksMichelle Nijhuis – Beloved BeastsMichelle Nijhuis, project editor at the Atlantic and award-winning journalist, discussed her book Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction (W. W. Norton, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 31 January 2022.
In the late nineteenth century, humans came at long last to a devastating realization: their rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving scores of animal species to extinction. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the history of the movement to protect and conserve other forms of life. From early battles to save charismatic species such as the Ameri...2022-01-3159 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksAlexander Etkind – Nature’s EvilAlexander Etkind, Professor of History of Russia-Europe Relations at the European University Institute (Italy), presented his book Nature’s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources (Wiley, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 24 January 2022.
This bold and wide-ranging book views the history of humankind through the prism of natural resources – how we acquire them, use them, value them, trade them, exploit them. History needs a cast of characters, and in this story the leading actors are peat and hemp, grain and iron, fur and oil, each with its own tale to tell.
The...2022-01-2454 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksChris Pearson – DogopolisChris Pearson, Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century History at University of Liverpool (UK), discussed his book Dogopolis: How Dogs and Humans Made Modern New York, London, and Paris (University of Chicago Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 17 January 2022.
Stroll through any American or European city today and you probably won’t get far before seeing a dog being taken for a walk. It’s expected that these domesticated animals can easily navigate sidewalks, streets, and other foundational elements of our built environment. But what if our cities were actually shaped in response to dogs m...2022-01-1757 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksGregg Mitman – Empire of RubberGregg Mitman, Vilas Research and William Coleman Professor of History, Medical History, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (USA), discussed his book Empire of Rubber: Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia (The New Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 10 January 2022.
In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of the world’s rubber grew under the U.S. flag, creating a bottleneck that hampered the nation’s explosive economic expansion. To solve its c...2022-01-1055 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksNancy Langston – Climate GhostsNancy Langston, Distinguished Professor of Environmental History at Michigan Technological University (USA), presented her book Climate Ghosts: Migratory Species in the Anthropocene (Brandeis University Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 13 December 2021.
Environmental historian Nancy Langston explores three “ghost species” in the Great Lakes watershed—woodland caribou, common loons, and lake sturgeon. Ghost species are those that have not gone completely extinct, although they may be extirpated from a particular area. Their traces are still present, whether in DNA, in small fragmented populations, in lone individuals roaming a desolate landscape in search of a mate...2021-12-1357 min
COVIDCallsEP #386 - 12.08.2021 - Human-Animal Intections in the PandemicToday I welcome Dolly Jørgensen--Professor of History, University of Stav-anger, Norway. Her current research agenda focuses on cultural histories of animal extinction, and she recently published Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging (MIT Press, 2019).
Dolly Jørgensen is Professor of History, University of Stav-anger, Norway specializing in histories of environment and technology. Her current research agenda focuses on cultural histories of animal extinction, and she recently published Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging (MIT Press, 2019). She is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Humanities and co-direc...2021-12-101h 12
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksRaf de Bont – Nature’s DiplomatsRaf de Bont, chair of History of Science and the Environment at Maastrict University, the Netherlands, talked about his book Nature’s Diplomats: Science, Internationalism, and Preservation, 1920-1960 (University of Pittsburg Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 6 December 2021.
Nature’s Diplomats explores the development of science-based and internationally conceived nature protection in its foundational years before the 1960s, the decade when it launched from obscurity onto the global stage. Raf De Bont studies a movement while it was still in the making and its groups were still rather small, revealing the geographies of th...2021-12-0658 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksCharlie Hailey – The PorchCharlie Hailey, Professor and Distinguished Teaching Scholar in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida, presented his book The Porch: Meditations on the Edge of Nature (University of Chicago Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 29 November 2021.
Come with us for a moment out onto the porch. Just like that, we’ve entered another world without leaving home. In this liminal space, an endless array of absorbing philosophical questions arises: What does it mean to be in a place? How does one place teach us about the world and ourselves? What do w...2021-11-2955 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksSamantha Walton – Everybody Needs BeautySamantha Walton, Reader in Modern Literature at Bath Spa University, presented her book Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure (Bloomsbury, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 22 November 2021.
Everybody is talking about the healing properties of nature. Hospitals are being retrofitted with gardens, and forests reimagined as wellbeing centres. On the Shetland Islands, it is possible to walk into a doctor’s surgery with anxiety or depression, and walk out with a prescription for nature.
Where has this come from, and what does ‘going to nature’ mean? Where is it – at the end of a...2021-11-2256 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJessica Hurley – Infrastructures of ApocalypseJessica Hurley, Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University, discussed her book Infrastructures of Apocalypse: American Literature and the Nuclear Complex (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 15 November 2021.
Since 1945, America has spent more resources on nuclear technology than any other national project. Although it requires a massive infrastructure that touches society on myriad levels, nuclear technology has typically been discussed in a limited, top-down fashion that clusters around powerful men. In Infrastructures of Apocalypse, Jessica Hurley turns this conventional wisdom on its head, offering a new approach that foc...2021-11-151h 01
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksCandace Fujikane – Mapping Abundance for a Planetary FutureCandace Fujikane, Professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i, presented her book Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai’i (Duke University Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 8 November 2021.
In Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, Candace Fujikane contends that the practice of mapping abundance is a radical act in the face of settler capital’s fear of an abundance that feeds. Cartographies of capital enable the seizure of abundant lands by enclosing “wastelands” claimed to be underdeveloped. By contrast, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) car...2021-11-0855 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksMax Liboiron – Pollution is ColonialismMax Liboiron, Associate Professor of Geography at Memorial University, Canada, joined the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 1 November 2021 to discuss Pollution is Colonialism (Duke University Press, 2021).
In Pollution Is Colonialism Max Liboiron presents a framework for understanding scientific research methods as practices that can align with or against colonialism. They point out that even when researchers are working toward benevolent goals, environmental science and activism are often premised on a colonial worldview and access to land. Focusing on plastic pollution, the book models an anticolonial scientific practice aligned with Indigenous, particularly Métis, concepts of la...2021-11-0157 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksVincent Ialenti – Deep Time ReckoningVincent Ialenti, Research Fellow at The Berggruen Institute and University of Southern California, USA, discussed his book Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now (MIT Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 25 October 2021.
We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth’s past and future life span. In t...2021-10-2559 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksHeather Houser – InfowhelmHeather Houser, associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, discussed her book Infowhelm: Environmental Art and Literature in an Age of Data (Columbia University Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 18 October 2021.
How do artists and writers engage with environmental knowledge in the face of overwhelming information about catastrophe? What kinds of knowledge do the arts produce when addressing climate change, extinction, and other environmental emergencies? What happens to scientific data when it becomes art? In Infowhelm, Heather Houser explores the ways contemporary art manages environmental knowledge in an...2021-10-1858 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksWilko Hardenberg – A Monastery for the IbexWilko Graf von Hardenberg, senior research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, presented his book A Monastery for the Ibex: Conservation, State, and Conflict on the Gran Paradiso, 1919-1949 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse series on Monday, 4 October 2021.
Gran Paradiso National Park is Italy’s oldest, and was instrumental in preventing the extinction of the Alpine ibex between World War I and just after World War II. Today, there are more than 30,000 ibex living in the Alps, all of which descended from that last colony protected in Gran Para...2021-10-0456 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksNayanika Mathur – Crooked CatsNayanika Mathur, associate professor in anthropology at University of Oxford, presented Crooked Cats. Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene (University of Chicago Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on 27 September 2021.
How do humans live near big cats—tigers, leopards, and lions—that may or may not be predatory? Though they are popularly known as “man eaters,” this new book by anthropologist Nayanika Mathur reframes them as cats that have gone off the straight path to become “crooked.” Her firsthand account of living with crooked cats in India lays bare the peculiar atmosphere of terror these encounters crea...2021-09-2757 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksKirsten Greer – Red Coats and Wild BirdsKirsten Greer, Associate Professor in the Departments of Geography and History at Nipissing University (Canada) and the Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Histories and Geographies, joined the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series to discuss her book Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) on Monday, 20 September 2021.
During the nineteenth century, Britain maintained a complex network of garrisons to manage its global empire. While these bases helped the British project power and secure trade routes, they served more than just a strategic purpose. During their to...2021-09-2057 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksRobert Geal – Ecological Film Theory and PsychoanalysisRobert Geal, Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Wolverhampton (UK), discussed his book Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis: Surviving the Environmental Apocalypse in Cinema (Routledge 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 13 September 2021.
This book applies ecolinguistics and psychoanalysis to explore how films fictionalising environmental disasters provide spectacular warnings against the dangers of environmental apocalypse, while highlighting that even these apparently environmentally friendly films can still facilitate problematic real-world changes in how people treat the environment.
Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis argues that these films exploit cinema’s inher...2021-09-1355 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksAnna Burton – Trees in Nineteenth-century English FictionAnna Burton, teaching fellow at University of Liverpool (UK), joined the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series to discuss her book Trees in Nineteenth-Century English Fiction: The Silvicultural Novel (Routledge, 2021) on Monday, 6 September 2021.
Trees in Nineteenth-Century English Fiction: The Silvicultural Novel identifies the picturesque thinker William Gilpin as a significant influence in this literary and environmental tradition. Remarks on Forest Scenery (1791) is formed by Gilpin’s own observations of trees, forests, and his New Forest home specifically; but it is also the product of tree-stories collected from ‘travellers and historians’ that came before him. This study tracks the impact...2021-09-0652 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksFinis Dunaway – Defending the Arctic RefugeFinis Dunaway, professor of history at Trent University (Canada), presented his book Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 30 August 2021.
Tucked away in the northeastern corner of Alaska is one of the most contested landscapes in all of North America: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Considered sacred by Indigenous peoples in Alaska and Canada and treasured by environmentalists, the refuge provides life-sustaining habitat for caribou, polar bears, migratory birds, and other species. For decades, th...2021-08-3058 min
treehugger podcastRecovering Lost Species with Dolly JørgensenAbsence of species we feel belong in our lives gives rise to powerful emotions. "It’s the feeling of environmental lost-ness and the potential found-ness that motivates decisions about recovering locally extinct animals," says Dr. Dolly Jørgensen, historian of the environment and technology and an environmental humanities scholar. Jørgensen's current research focuses on cultural histories of animal extinction, and in 2019 she published Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging (MIT Press). She is interested in how human technologies shape the world around us and how we come to understand what is "natural" and...2021-08-241h 04
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJoanna Page – Decolonizing Science in Latin American ArtJoanna Page, Reader in Latin American Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Cambridge, presented her book Decolonizing Science in Latin American Art (UCL Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 23 August 2021.
Projects that bring the ‘hard’ sciences into art are increasingly being exhibited in galleries and museums across the world. In a surge of publications on the subject, few focus on regions beyond Europe and the Anglophone world. Decolonizing Science in Latin American Art assembles a new corpus of art-science projects by Latin American artists, ranging from big-budget collaborations with NASA and MIT...2021-08-2355 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksEmily O’Gorman – Wetlands in a Dry LandEmily O’Gorman, senior lecturer at Macquarie University (Australia) kicked off our fall 2021 edition of the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series with a discussion of her new book Wetlands in a Dry Land: More-than-Human Histories of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (University of Washington Press, 2021) on Monday 16 August 2021.
In the name of agriculture, urban growth, and disease control, humans have drained, filled, or otherwise destroyed nearly 87 percent of the world’s wetlands over the past three centuries. Unintended consequences include biodiversity loss, poor water quality, and the erosion of cultural sites, and only in the past few decades...2021-08-1657 min
4-togetBritney Spears' umyndiggørelse, drama i Haveforeningen Vibelund, danske fans i Baku og 25 år efter fåret DollyMange artikler, indslag og dokumentarer er lavet om Britney Spears og hendes umyndiggørelse. I den forbindelse taler vi i dag med en, der har skrevet i en artikel, at det er en debat, der "handler om en kynisk underholdningsindustri og et system, der er fyldt med fejl, og som undertrykker særligt kvinders basale menneskerettigheder". Her på Radio4 har vi dækket sagen, hvor Jørgen Erik Jørgensen, der er formand for haveforeningen Vibelund i Odense, står bag et brev, der opfordrer til at stemme på etniske danskere. I dag talte Radio4 Morgen så videre om sagen med forma...2021-07-0255 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksAnna Barcz – Environmental Cultures in Soviet East EuropeAnna Barcz, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, presented her book Environmental Cultures in Soviet East Europe: Literature, History and Memory (Bloomsbury, 2020) on Monday, 14 June 2021, in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series.
For more than 40 years Eastern European culture came under the sway of Soviet rule. What is the legacy of this period for cultural attitudes to the environment and the contemporary battle to confront climate change?
Anna Barcz offers the first in-depth study of the legacy of the Soviet era on attitudes to the environment in...2021-06-141h 00
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksChristine Keiner – Deep CutChristine Keiner, Professor of STS and History at Rochester Institute of Technology, presented her book Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal (University of Georgia Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talks series on Monday, 7 June 2021.
The Atlantic-Pacific Central American sea-level canal is generally regarded as a spectacular failure. However, Deep Cut examines the canal in an alternative context, as an anticipated infrastructure project that captured attention from the nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries. Historian Christine Keiner shows how the evolving plans for the sea-level ship canal performed distinct kinds of work for di...2021-06-0750 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJoseph Pugliese – Biopolitics of the More-than-HumanJoseph Pugliese, Professor in the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University (Australia), discussed his book Biopolitics of the More-than-Human: Forensic Ecologies of Violence (Duke University Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book series on Monday, 31 May 2021.
In Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human Pugliese examines the concept of the biopolitical through a nonanthropocentric lens, arguing that more-than-human entities—from soil and orchards to animals and water—are actors and agents in their own right with legitimate claims to justice. Examining occupied Palestine, Guantánamo, and sites of US drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen...2021-05-3155 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksBen Anderson – Cities, Mountains & Being ModernBen Anderson, Lecturer in Twentieth Century European History at Keele University (UK), discussed his book Cities, Mountains and Being Modern in fin-de-siècle England and Germany (Palgrave, 2020) in the Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talk series on Monday, 24 May 2021.
This book is the first transnational history of rambling and mountaineering. Focussing on the critical turn-of-the-century era, it offers new insights into alpine development, attitudes to danger, cultures of time, internationalism and domesticity in the outdoors. It charts an emerging group of mass tourist activities, and argues that these thousands of walkers and climbers can only be understood within the...2021-05-2459 min
the minor constellations podcastEpisode 2 | Institutionalising the Non-Human: in conversation with Gitte Westegaard and Anne Maabjerg MikkelsenIn this episode we talk to Gitte Westergaard, doctoral fellow associated with the Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Research Group at the University of Stavanger, and our colleague in the RTG minor cosmopolitanisms, Anne Maabjerg Mikkelsen. Both researchers deal with questions within the environmental humanities, exploring the posthuman through the prism of concepts like sacrality and liminality. The point of departure for the conversation is Gitte's article, co-written with Dolly Jørgensen, titled "Making Specimens Sacred: Putting the Bodies of Solitario Jorge and Cụ Rùa on Display”. The conversation weaves Gitte's work on the display of extinct giant tortoise Lonesome George...2021-05-1228 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksFinn Arne Jørgensen – RecyclingFinn Arne Jørgensen, Professor of environmental history at University of Stavanger and co-host of the book talk series, presented his recent book Recycling (MIT Press, 2019) on 10 May 2021 in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book series.
Is there a point to recycling? Is recycling even good for the environment? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Finn Arne Jørgensen answers (drumroll, please): it depends. From a technical point of view, recycling is a series of processes—collecting, sorting, processing, manufacturing. Recycling also has a cultural component; at its core, recycling is about transformation and value...2021-05-1056 minGreenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksFinn Arne Jørgensen – RecyclingFinn Arne Jørgensen, Professor of environmental history at University of Stavanger and co-host of the book talk series, presented his recent book Recycling (MIT Press, 2019) on 10 May 2021 in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book series.
Is there a point to recycling? Is recycling even good for the environment? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Finn Arne Jørgensen answers (drumroll, please): it depends. From a technical point of view, recycling is a series of processes—collecting, sorting, processing, manufacturing. Recycling also has a cultural component; at its core, recycling is about transformation and value...2021-05-1056 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksElizabeth Parker – The Forest and the EcoGothicElizabeth Parker, founder of Gothic Nature Journal, presented her book The Forest and the EcoGothic: The Deep Dark Woods in the Popular Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on 3 May 2021.
This book offers the first full length study on the pervasive archetype of The Gothic Forest in Western culture. The idea of the forest as deep, dark, and dangerous has an extensive history and continues to resonate throughout contemporary popular culture. Parker examines both why we fear the forest and how exactly these fears manifest in our stories. The book draws on and f...2021-05-0356 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJustyna Poray-Wybranowska – Climate Change, Ecological Catastrophe, and the Contemporary Postcolonial NovelJustyna Poray-Wybranowska, an early career researcher in postcolonial studies and environmental humanities, discussed her book Climate Change, Ecological Catastrophe, and the Contemporary Postcolonial Novel in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 26 April 2021.
Climate Change, Ecological Catastrophe, and the Contemporary Novel responds to the critical need for transdisciplinary research on the relationship between colonialism and catastrophe. It represents the first sustained analysis of the connection between colonial legacy and present-day ecological catastrophe in postcolonial fiction. Analyzing contemporary South Asian and South Pacific novels that grapple with climate change and catastrophe, environmental exploitation and instability, and hum...2021-04-2654 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksEnvironmental History Book RoundtableAs part of Environmental History Week organized by the American Society for Environmental History, the Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talk series hosted a special panel discussion featuring environmental historians who have presented their books in the series during the previous year. This special book talk took place on Monday, 19 April 2021, 16:00 in Norway (10am US Eastern).
Our panelists reflected upon the place of their own work within the larger framework of environmental humanities: After having written their book as a historian, do they think the book has something to contribute to environmental humanities scholars who are not historians...2021-04-191h 02Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksEnvironmental History Book RoundtableAs part of Environmental History Week organized by the American Society for Environmental History, the Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talk series hosted a special panel discussion featuring environmental historians who have presented their books in the series during the previous year. This special book talk took place on Monday, 19 April 2021, 16:00 in Norway (10am US Eastern).
Our panelists reflected upon the place of their own work within the larger framework of environmental humanities: After having written their book as a historian, do they think the book has something to contribute to environmental humanities scholars who are not historians...2021-04-191h 02
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksFrederico Freitas – Nationalizing NatureFrederico Freitas, Assistant Professsor of History at North Carolina State University (USA), discussed his book Nationalizing Nature: Iguazu Falls and National Parks at the Brazil-Argentina Border (Cambridge University Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 12 April 2021.
Today, one-quarter of all the land in Latin America is set apart for nature protection. In Nationalizing Nature, Frederico Freitas uncovers the crucial role played by conservation in the region’s territorial development by exploring how Brazil and Argentina used national parks to nationalize borderlands. In the 1930s, Brazil and Argentina created some of their first national park...2021-04-1254 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJonathan Padwe – Disturbed Forests, Fragmented MemoriesOn Monday, 29 March 2021, the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk was joined by Jonathan Padwe, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa, to discuss his book Disturbed Forest, Fragmented Memories: Jarai and Other Lives in the Cambodian Highlands (University of Washington Press, 2020).
In the hill country of northeast Cambodia, just a few kilometers from the Vietnam border, sits the village of Tang Kadon. This community of hill rice farmers of the Jarai ethnic minority group survived aerial bombardment and the American invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, only to find themselves relocated to th...2021-03-2958 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksC. Anne Claus – Drawing the Sea NearC. Anne Claus, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University (USA), presented her book Drawing the Sea Near: Satoumi and Coral Reef Conservation in Okinawa (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 22 March 2021.
This richly detailed, engagingly written ethnography focuses on Okinawa’s coral reefs to explore an unusually inclusive, experiential, and socially just approach to conservation. Claus provides a compelling look at how transnational conservation organizations negotiate institutional expectations for conservation with localized approaches to caring for ocean life.2021-03-2255 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksTimo Maran – EcosemioticsTimo Maran, Professor of Ecosemiotics and Environmental Humanities at Tartu University, presented his new book Ecosemiotics: The Study of Signs in Changing Ecologies (Cambridge University Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse book talk series on Monday, 15 March 2021.
This Element provides an accessible introduction to ecosemiotics and demonstrates its pertinence for the study of today’s unstable culture-nature relations. Ecosemiotics can be defined as the study of sign processes responsible for ecological phenomena. The arguments in this Element are developed in three steps that take inspiration from both humanities and biological sciences: 1) Showing the diversity, reach and effects of sign-mediated rela...2021-03-1557 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksPratik Chakrabarti – Inscriptions of NaturePratik Chakrabarti, chair in the history of science and medicine and director of the Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the University of Manchester, presented his book Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse book talk series on Monday, 8 March 2021.
In Inscriptions of Nature, Chakrabarti argues that, in both the real and the metaphorical digging of the earth, the deep history of nature, landscape, and people became indelibly inscribed in the study and imagination of antiquity. The first book to situate deep history as an...2021-03-0853 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksAlda Balthrop-Lewis – Thoreau’s ReligionAlda Balthrop-Lewis, Research Fellow in Religion and Theology at Australian Catholic University, joined the Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talk series to discuss her book Thoreau’s Religion: Walden Woods, Social Justice, and the Politics of Asceticism (Cambridge University Press, 2021) on Monday, 1 March 2021.
Thoreau’s Religion presents a ground-breaking interpretation of Henry David Thoreau’s most famous book, Walden. Rather than treating Walden Woods as a lonely wilderness, Balthrop-Lewis demonstrates that Thoreau’s ascetic life was a form of religious practice dedicated to cultivating a just, multispecies community. The book makes an important contribution to scholarship in religious studies, p...2021-03-0153 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksBenjamin Cohen – Pure AdulterationBenjamin Cohen, Associate Professor of Engineering Studies and Environmental Studies at Lafayette College (USA), discussed his book Pure Adulteration: Cheating on Nature in the Age of Manufactured Food (University of Chicago Press, 2019) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book series on Monday, 22 February 2021.
In Pure Adulteration, Cohen uses the pure food crusades to provide a captivating window onto the origins of manufactured foods and the perceived problems they wrought. Cohen follows farmers, manufacturers, grocers, hucksters, housewives, politicians, and scientific analysts as they struggled to demarcate and patrol the ever-contingent, always contested border between purity and adulteration, and as, at...2021-02-2258 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJemma Deer – Radical AnimismJemma Deer, Researcher-in-Residence at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Germany), talked about her book Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World (Bloombury, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 15 February 2021.
In Radical Animism, Deer offers a new theory of animism for an age of environmental crisis, elaborated through innovative readings of classic and contemporary literary texts. The reckoning of climate change calls for us to fundamentally rethink our notions of human centrality, superiority and power. Drawing on a wide range of modern writers and thinkers – from Freud and Darwin to Latour...2021-02-1555 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksCraig Santos Perez – Habitat ThresholdCraig Santos Perez, Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa, discussed his book of eco-poetry Habitat Threshold (Omindawn, 2020) in the Greenhouse book talk series on Monday, 8 February.
With Habitat Threshold, Craig Santos Perez has crafted a timely collection of eco-poetry that explores his ancestry as a native Pacific Islander, the ecological plight of his homeland, and his fears for the future. The book begins with the birth of the author’s daughter, capturing her growth and childlike awe at the wonders of nature. As it progresses, Perez confronts the impacts of en...2021-02-0857 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksStefania Barca – Forces of ReproductionStefania Barca, Zennström visiting professor in Climate Change Leadership, Uppsala University, Sweden, joined the Greenhouse book talk series on Monday, 1 February 2021 at 16:00 to discuss her book Forces of Reproduction (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
The concept of Anthropocene has been incorporated within a hegemonic narrative that represents ‘Man’ as the dominant geological force of our epoch, emphasizing the destruction and salvation power of industrial technologies. This book develops a counter-hegemonic narrative based on the perspective of earthcare labour– or the ‘forces of reproduction’. It brings to the fore the historical agency of reproductive and subsistence workers as those subjects that...2021-02-011h 00
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksSasha Engelmann – Sensing Art in the AtmosphereSasha Engelmann, Lecturer in GeoHumanities at Royal Holloway University, joined us for a Greenhouse online book talk about her book Sensing Art in the Atmosphere: Elemental Lures and Aerosolar Practices (Routledge, 2020) on Monday, 25 January 2021.
Sensing Art in the Atmosphere: Elemental Lures and Aerosolar Practices traces the potential of artistic, community-driven experiments to amplify our sensing of atmosphere, marrying attentions to atmospheric affect with visceral awareness of the materials, institutions and processes hovering in the air. Drawing on six years of practice-led research with artistic and activist initiatives Museo Aero Solar and Aerocene, initiated by artist Tomás Saraceno...2021-01-2556 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksKate Teltscher – Palace of PalmsKate Teltscher, Emeritus Fellow of the School of Humanities at the University of Roehampton and Visiting Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, discussed her new book Palace of Palms: Tropical Dreams and the Making of Kew (Pan Macmillan, 2020) in the Greenhouse book talk series on Monday, 18 January 2021.
Daringly innovative when it opened in 1848, the Palm House in Kew Gardens remains one of the most beautiful glass buildings in the world today. Seemingly weightless, vast and yet light, the Palm House floats free from architectural convention, at once monumental and ethereal. From a distance, the crowns of th...2021-01-1849 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJamie Lorimer – The Probiotic PlanetOn Monday, 11 January 2021, Jamie Lorimer, associate professor in the School of Geography and the Environment at University of Oxford, discussed his book The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) on the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series.
Most of us are familiar with probiotics added to milk or yogurt to improve gastrointestinal health. In fact, the term refers to any intervention in which life is used to manage life—from the microscopic, like consuming fermented food to improve gut health, to macro approaches such as biological pest control and natural flood management. In t...2021-01-1148 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksPeter Dauvergne – AI in the WildPeter Dauvergne, Professor of International Relations at the University of British Columbia (Canada), discussed AI in the Wild: Sustainability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 7 December 2020.
Drones with night vision are tracking elephant and rhino poachers in African wildlife parks and sanctuaries; smart submersibles are saving coral from carnivorous starfish on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef; recycled cell phones alert Brazilian forest rangers to the sound of illegal logging. The tools of artificial intelligence are being increasingly deployed in the battle for global sustainability. And yet...2020-12-0756 min
Alt for K - JulespecialJulespecial 5. decemberDet skete I de dage… At vi snakkede om A Holly Dolly Christmas, at du bare skal i gang igen og om vores yndlings julekalender.2020-12-0505 min
Alt for KJulespecial 5. decemberDet skete I de dage… At vi snakkede om A Holly Dolly Christmas, at du bare skal i gang igen og om vores yndlings julekalender.2020-12-0505 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksAlexandra Palmer – Ethical Debates in Orangutan ConservationAlexandra (Ally) Palmer, post-doctoral researcher at University of Oxford, presented her book Ethical Debates in Orangutan Conservation (Routledge, 2020), on Monday, 30 November 2020, in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series.
Ethical Debates in Orangutan Conservation explores how conservationists decide whether, and how, to undertake rehabilitation and reintroduction (R&R) when rescuing orphaned orangutans. Palmer demonstrates that exploring ethical dilemmas is crucial for understanding ongoing disagreements about how to help endangered wildlife in an era of anthropogenic extinction.
Drawing on in-depth qualitative research with orangutan conservation practitioners, Palmer examines how ethical trade-offs shape debates about R&R. For...2020-11-3057 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksRebecca Giggs – FathomsAustralian writer Rebecca Giggs discussed her book Fathoms: The World in the Whale (Scribe, 2020) on Monday, 23 November 2020, in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series.
When Rebecca Giggs encountered a humpback whale stranded on her local beach in Australia, she began to wonder how the lives of whales might shed light on the condition of our seas. How do whales experience environmental change? Has our connection to these fabled animals been transformed by technology? What future awaits us, and them? And what does it mean to write about nature in the midst of an ecological crisis?
...2020-11-2354 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksAlenda Chang – Playing NatureAlenda Chang, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at University of Calidornia Santa Barbara (USA), discussed her book Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) on Monday, 16 November 2020 in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series.
Arguing that video games need to be understood as part of a cultural response to the growing ecological crisis, Playing Nature seeds conversations around key environmental science concepts and terms. Alenda Chang suggests several ways to rethink existing game taxonomies and theories of agency while revealing surprising fundamental similarities between game play and scientific work.2020-11-1658 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksAidan Tynan – The Desert in Modern Literature & PhilosophyAidan Tynan, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University (Wales), presented his book The Desert in Modern Literature and Philosophy: Wasteland Aesthetics (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse online book talk series on Monday, 9 November 2020.
Tynan offers a timely and provocative rethinking of some of the core assumptions of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Showing the significance of deserts and wastelands in philosophy literature since Romanticism, he argues that the desert has served to articulate anxieties over the cultural significance of space in the Anthropocene.2020-11-0952 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksPeder Anker – The Power of the PeripheryPeder Anker, Professor of History of Science at New York University (USA), presented his book The Power of the Periphery: How Norway Became an Environmental Pioneer for the World (Cambridge UP, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on 2 November 2020.
What is the source of Norway’s culture of environmental harmony in our troubled world? Exploring the role of Norwegian scholar-activists of the late twentieth century, Peder Anker examines how they portrayed their country as a place of environmental stability in a world filled with tension. In contrast with societies dirtied by the hot and cold wars...2020-11-0258 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksHannah Boast – HydrofictionsHannah Boast, Ad Astra Fellow and Assistant Professor at University College Dublin, presented Hydrofictions: Water, Power and Politics in Israeli and Palestinian Literature (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 26 October 2020.
Water is a major global issue that will shape our future. This book identifies water as a crucial new topic of literary and cultural analysis at a critical moment for the world’s water resources, focusing on the urgent context of Israel/Palestine. It covers a broad range of contemporary Israeli and Palestinian authors including Mourid Barghouti, Sayed Kashua and Amos...2020-10-2649 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksEtienne Benson – SurroundingsEtienne Benson, Director of Department II, Knowledge Systems and Collective Life, at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Germany (formerly Associate Professor in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania), presented his book Surroundings: A History of Environments and Environmentalisms (University of Chicago Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 19 October 2020.
Given the ubiquity of environmental rhetoric in the modern world, it’s easy to think that the meaning of the terms environment and environmentalism are and always have been self-evident. But in Surro...2020-10-1956 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksLeslie Green – Rock | Water | LifeLesley Green, Professor of Anthropology and founding director of Environmental Humanities South at University of Cape Town (South Africa), presented her book Rock | Water | Life: Ecology and Humanities for a Decolonial South Africa (Duke University Press, 2020) on Monday, October 12, 2020, in our Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series.
In Rock | Water | Life Green examines the interwoven realities of inequality, racism, colonialism, and environmental destruction in South Africa, calling for environmental research and governance to transition to an ecopolitical approach that could address South Africa’s history of racial oppression and environmental exploitation. Green analyzes conflicting accounts of nature in envi...2020-10-1254 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksKate Rigby – Reclaiming RomanticismKate Rigby, Alexander von Humboldt Professor at University of Cologne, Germany (previously Professor of Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University), gave a Greenhouse book talk on her book Reclaiming Romanticism: Towards an Ecopoetics of Decolonization (Bloomsbury, 2020) on Monday, October 5, 2020.
The earliest environmental criticism took its inspiration from the Romantic poets and their immersion in the natural world. Today the “romanticising” of nature has come to be viewed with suspicion. Written by one of the leading ecocritics writing today, Reclaiming Romanticism rediscovers the importance of the European Romantic tradition to the ways that writers and critics engage with the envi...2020-10-0552 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksLuke Keogh – The Wardian CaseLuke Keogh, Senior Curator at the National Wool Museum (Australia), presented his book The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World (University of Chicago Press, 2020) in our Greenhouse online environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 28 September 2020.
In our technologically advanced and globalized contemporary world, it is easy to forget that not long ago it was extremely difficult to transfer plants from place to place, as they often died from mishandling, cold weather, and ocean salt spray. In this first book on the Wardian case, Luke Keogh leads us across centuries and se...2020-09-2850 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJennifer Telesca – Red GoldJennifer Telesca, Assistant Professor of environmental justice at the Pratt Institute (USA), presented her new book Red Gold: The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) in our Greenhouse online environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 21 September 2020.
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is the world’s foremost organization for managing and conserving tunas, seabirds, turtles, and sharks traversing international waters. Founded by treaty in 1969, ICCAT stewards what has become under its tenure one of the planet’s most prominent endangered fish: the Atlantic bluefin tuna. Called “red gold” by...2020-09-2149 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksMelody Jue – Wild Blue MediaMelody Jue, Associate Professor of English, University of California Santa Barbara (USA), presented her book Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater (Duke University Press, 2020) in our Greenhouse online environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 14 September 2020.
In Wild Blue Media, Jue destabilizes terrestrial-based ways of knowing and reorients our perception of the world by considering the ocean itself as a media environment—a place where the weight and opacity of seawater transforms how information is created, stored, transmitted, and perceived. By recentering media theory on and under the sea, Jue calls attention to the differences between perceptual envir...2020-09-1453 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksRocio Gomez – Silver Veins, Dusty LungsRocio Gomez, Assistant Professor in Latin American History at Virginia Commonwealth University (USA), presented her new book Silver Veins, Dusty Lungs: Mining, Water, and Public Health in Zacatecas, 1835-1946 (University of Nebraska Press, 2020) in our Greenhouse online environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 7 September 2020.
In Mexico environmental struggles have been fought since the nineteenth century in such places as Zacatecas, where United States and European mining interests have come into open conflict with rural and city residents over water access, environmental health concerns, and disease compensation. In Silver Veins, Dusty Lungs, Rocio Gomez examines the detrimental eff...2020-09-0744 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksDaniel Macfarlane – Fixing Niagara FallsDaniel Macfarlane, Associate Professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University (USA), launched his book Fixing Niagara Falls: Environment, Energy and Engineers at the World's Most Famous Waterfall (UBC Press, 2020) in our Greenhouse online environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 31 August 2020.
Since the late nineteenth century, Niagara Falls has been heavily engineered to generate energy behind a flowing façade designed to appeal to tourists. Essentially, this natural wonder is now a tap: huge tunnels channel the waters of the Niagara River around the Falls, which ebb and flow according to t...2020-08-3148 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksThom van Dooren – The Wake of CrowsThom van Dooren, Associate Professor at University of Sydney (Australia), presented his book The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds (Columbia University Press, 2019) in our Greenhouse online environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 24 August 2020.
Crows can be found almost everywhere that people are, from tropical islands to deserts and arctic forests, from densely populated cities to suburbs and farms. The Wake of Crows is an exploration of the entangled lives of humans and crows. Focusing on five key sites, Thom van Dooren asks how we might live well with crows in a changing worl...2020-08-2449 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksEmily Wanderer – Life of a PestEmily Wanderer, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at University of Pittsburgh (USA), presented her book The Life of a Pest: An Ethnography of Biological Invasion in Mexico (University of California Press, 2020) in our Greenhouse online environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 17 August 2020.
The Life of a Pest tracks the work practices of scientists in Mexico as they study flora and fauna at scales ranging from microscopic to ecosystemic. Amid concerns about climate change, infectious disease outbreaks, and biotechnology, scientists in Mexico have expanded the focus of biopolitics and biosecurity, looking beyond threats to human life to include thr...2020-08-1746 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksPaul Huebener – Nature’s Broken ClocksPaul Huebener, Associate Professor of English at Athabasca University (Canada), presented his book Nature’s Broken Clocks: Reimagining Time in the Face of the Environmental Crisis in our Greenhouse online environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 15 June 2020.
The environmental crisis is, in many ways, a crisis of time. From the distress cries of birds that no longer know when to migrate, to the rapid dying of coral reefs, to the quickening pace of extreme weather events, the patterns and timekeeping of the natural world are falling apart. We have broken nature’s clocks. Lying hidden at the ro...2020-06-1547 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksEmily Pawley – The Nature of the FutureEmily Pawley, Associate Professor of History at Dickinson College (USA), discussed her book The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Science and Capitalism in the Antebellum North (University of Chicago Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 8 June 2020.
The nostalgic mist surrounding farms can make it hard to write their history, encrusting them with stereotypical rural virtues and unrealistically separating them from markets, capitalism, and urban influences. The Nature of the Future aims to remake this staid vision. Emily Pawley examines a place and period of enormous agricultural vitality—antebellum New York State—and follows t...2020-06-081h 00
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksDavid Fedman – Seeds of ControlDavid Fedman, Assistant Professor of history at the University of California, Irvine (USA), discussed his book Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea (University of Washington Press, 2020) in our Greenhouse online environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 1 June 2020.
Japanese colonial rule in Korea (1905–1945) ushered in natural resource management programs that profoundly altered access to and ownership of the peninsula’s extensive mountains and forests. Under the banner of “forest love,” the colonial government set out to restructure the rhythms and routines of agrarian life, targeting everything from home heating to food preparation. Timber indus...2020-06-0157 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksChristine Eriksen and Susan Ballard – Alliances in the AnthropoceneChristine Eriksen, Senior Lecturer in geography, and Susan Ballard, Senior Lecturer in art history, from the University of Wollongong (Australia) presented their jointly authored book Alliances in the Anthropocene: Fire, Plants, and People (Palgrave, 2020) in our Greenhouse online book series on Monday, 25 May 2020.
Through a truly interdisplinary study, this book explores how fire, plants and people coexist in the Anthropocene. In a time of dramatic environmental transformation, the authors examine how human impacts on the planetary system are being felt at all levels from the geological and the arboreal to the atmospheric. The book brings together the di...2020-05-2546 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksAngela Cassidy – Vermin, Victims and DiseaseAngela Cassidy, Lecturer in Science & Technology Studies at University of Exeter, discussed her book Vermin, Victims and Disease: British Debates over Bovine Tuberculosis and Badgers (Palgrave, 2019) in our Greenhouse online book talk series on Monday, 18 May. This open access book provides the first critical history of the controversy over whether to cull wild badgers to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in British cattle. This question has plagued several professional generations of politicians, policymakers, experts and campaigners since the early 1970s. Questions of what is known, who knows, who cares, who to trust and what to do about th...2020-05-1847 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJessica Lee – Two Trees Make A ForestAuthor and environmental historian Jessica J. Lee discussed her book Two Trees Make a Forest (Virago Books, 2019) on Monday, 11 May in our Greenhouse book talk series. Between tectonic plates and conflicting cultures, Taiwan is an island of extremes: high mountains, exposed flatlands, thick forests. After unearthing a hidden memoir of her grandfather’s life, written on the cusp of his total memory loss, Jessica J Lee hunts his story, in parallel with exploring Taiwan, hoping to understand the quakes that brought her family from China, to Taiwan and Canada, and the ways in which our human stories are interlaced with...2020-05-1148 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksAntony Adler – Neptune’s LaboratoryAntony Adler, Research Associate at Carleton College (USA), presented his book Neptune’s Laboratory: Fantasy, Fear, and Science at Sea (Harvard University Press, 2019) on Monday, 4 May in our Greenhouse online book series. We have long been fascinated with the oceans, seeking “to pierce the profundity” of their depths. In studying the history of marine science, we also learn about ourselves. Neptune’s Laboratory explores the ways in which scientists, politicians, and the public have invoked ocean environments in imagining the fate of humanity and of the planet from the early nineteenth century to the Cold War—conjuring ideal-world fantasies alongside fear...2020-05-0441 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksBathsheba Demuth – Floating CoastBathsheba Demuth, Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society at Brown University (USA), discussed her book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (WW Norton, 2019) in our Greenhouse online book talk series on Monday, 27 April. Floating Coast offers a groundbreaking exploration of the relationships between capitalism, communism, and Arctic ecology. Whales and walruses, caribou and fox, gold and oil: through the stories of these animals and resources, Bathsheba Demuth reveals how people have turned ecological wealth in a remote region into economic growth and state power for more than 150 years. Drawing on her own experience living wit...2020-04-2751 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksEva Giraud – What Comes After Entanglement?Eva Haifa Giraud, Lecturer in Media Studies at Keele University (UK), discussed her book What Comes After Entanglement? Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion (Duke University Press, 2019) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 20 April 2020. By foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Yet as Eva Haifa Giraud contends in What Comes after Entanglement?, for all their conceptual power in implicating humans in ecologically damaging practices, these theories can undermine scope for political action. Drawing inspiration fro...2020-04-2044 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksPaul Merchant – Latin American Culture & the Limits of the HumanPaul Merchant, Lecturer in Latin American Film and Visual Culture at University of Bristol (UK), presented Latin American Culture and the Limits of the Human (University Press of Florida, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 13 April 2020. Merchant co-edited the volume with Lucy Bollington, who is Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Film at University College London. This volume explores works from Latin American literary and visual culture that question what it means to be human and examine the ways humans and nonhumans shape one another. In doing so, it provides new perspectives on how the region ch...2020-04-1340 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksJeremy Zallen – American LucifersJeremy Zallen, Assistant Professor history at Lafayette College (USA), discussed his new book American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865 in our Greenhouse environmental humanities online book talk series on Monday, 6 April at 15:00 CET. The myth of light and progress has blinded us. In our electric world, we are everywhere surrounded by effortlessly glowing lights that simply exist, as they should, seemingly clear and comforting proof that human genius means the present will always be better than the past, and the future better still. At best, this is half the story. At worst, it is a lie...2020-04-0644 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksDolly Jørgensen – Recovering Lost Species in the Modern AgeWe continue our online environmental humanities book talks for our second episode with Dolly Jørgensen, Professor of History, University of Stavanger, Norway, presenting her book Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging (MIT Press, 2019) on Monday, 30 March 2020.
This groundbreaking book brings together environmental history and the history of emotions to examine the motivations behind species conservation actions. In Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age, Dolly Jørgensen uses the environmental histories of reintroduction, rewilding, and resurrection to view the modern conservation paradigm of the recovery of nature as an emotionally ch...2020-03-3046 min
Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book TalksDavid Farrier – FootprintsDuring the COVID days of digital communication and physical distancing, we decided to support environmental humanities scholarship that has been temporarily effected. To this end, we launched a new series of online book talks by authors of environmental humanities books. We will have talks every Monday afternoon that are online. Everyone is welcome to join the event to hear and ask questions. In our very first book talk on 23 March 2020, hosts Dolly and Finn Arne Jørgensen, co-directors of the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger (Norway) talked with David Farrier, Professor of Literature and t...2020-03-2349 min
Auditorium UiS – Populærvitenskap – UiS podkastKan humanister bidra i klima- og miljøutfordringene?Ja, mener miljøhistorikerne Finn Arne Jørgensen og Dolly Jørgensen. Professorene mener humanister kan endre fortellingen om oss selv og avsløre de grunnleggende holdningene som gjør det mulig å drive miljøfiendtlig politikk. Programleder: Espen Reiss Mathiesen.2017-12-1853 min
Exploring Environmental HistoryThe power of the wildThe power of the wild is an idea that has been important in western thought as a place of refuge or separation where we can feel the power of nature. It is a place where humans are not in control and their power is limited. Using nature as a category of power creates a dichotomy between humans and nature, which is problematic because humans are very much part of eco-systems in which we live. Is it then valid for historians to invoke models of power dynamics to study past interactions between humans and nature? This was one of the...2013-11-2525 minExploring Environmental HistoryDesire for the Wild – Wild Desires? The trouble with rewildingIt is undeniable that human influence is now felt in almost every ecosystem, region and ocean of the world. As a result wilderness or wild nature is becoming less abundant. In response to this less wild world, landscape and ecosystem restorations are undertaken all over the globe. One of these places is the wetland area of Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, England, where the National Trust is attempting a landscape scale restoration. This programme is not just about restoring but also rewilding the landscape. A big part of the Wicken Fen restoration involves the introduction of large grazers: Konik ponies...2013-09-2825 min