Series

The Great Blasket Island, Storytelling, and the Environment

By |2021-06-28T07:38:07+01:00June 28th, 2021|

By Matthias Egeler and Anna Pilz

We are standing on the headland of Dunmore Head on the western edge of Dingle Peninsula, on the western edge of Ireland, on the western edge of Europe. One moment, the slope is speckled with light, the next it is in the shadow of a heavy rain cloud. Then the winds push away the rain leaving behind a sparkling rainbow that disappears after five minutes.

A Sketch for Teaching the Anthropocene in the Alps

By |2021-05-13T15:37:41+01:00February 15th, 2021|

By Heidi E. Danzl (trans. Kristy Henderson)

The Alps can be considered a hot spot for climate change due to changing growing seasons and tree lines, species migration, more intense weather events, increased glacial melt, droughts, mudslides, avalanches, flooding, and the omnipresence of micro-technofossils. They are therefore well suited to teaching the Anthropocene and exploring its impacts. In the following, I sketch several ideas for teaching the Anthropocene based on existing cultural events, institutions, and practices within contemporary Alpine communities.

Dazzling and Dangerous: Epidemics, Space Physics, and Settler Understandings of the Aurora Borealis

By |2021-05-13T15:37:45+01:00February 3rd, 2021|

By Jennifer Fraser and Noah Stemeroff

Earlier this year, Explore, a multimedia company that operates the largest live nature camera network on the planet, noticed that one of its livestreams was going viral. The feed in question broadcasts from Churchill, Manitoba. Positioned directly beneath the auroral oval, this camera offers viewers a chance to catch a glimpse of the spectacular auroral displays that grace the city’s skyline nearly three hundred days of every year.

Resisting Climate Change Apocalypticism: Environmental Justice Activism from the South Pacific

By |2021-05-13T15:37:48+01:00January 28th, 2021|

By Hanna Straß-Senol

In late 2013, an Australian newspaper reported that a man from Kiribati “stood to make history as the world’s first climate refugee.” The New Zealand High Court, before which the man appeared, rejected the claim because the category of climate refugee was not included under the United Nation’s provisions for refugees.

Book Review: Elizabeth Hennessy, On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galápagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden

By |2021-05-13T15:37:52+01:00January 22nd, 2021|

By Rodrigo Salido Moulinié

The reports said they wanted to kill the turtle. They surrounded the research station and refused to let supplies go through to the 33 people—and the colony of reptiles—inside the building. Yet the fishermen went on strike and took the building not because they hated that turtle (they did not even intend to harm it), but because of what it meant: an allegory of the politics of conservationism, development, and the local making of science.