Edge Effects is a digital magazine produced by graduate students at the Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE), which is part of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. It was founded in 2014.
Edge Effects offers a wide array of content relating to environmental and cultural change across the full sweep of human history. We seek to invite and cultivate a broad readership and authorship that spans a range of political and cultural perspectives. We aim to address the historical and contemporary marginalization and silencing of voices in academic disciplines and the academy more broadly. Our name—about which you can read more in a piece by Bill Cronon—invokes our commitment to publishing across boundaries, at the intersections of the sciences with the humanities, of academe with the public, of narrated pasts with imagined futures. You can learn about how we built Edge Effects in this essay.
We believe edges are good places for looking in many directions to scrutinize and try to understand the world around us.
Edge Effects features content in many formats—text, image, video, and a podcast—while maintaining a commitment to clear and accessible prose. Find out more about what we publish and how to pitch us on our submissions page.
The editorial board consists of CHE graduate students and a faculty advisor, positions that rotate on a regular basis. We especially encourage submissions from graduate students and early career scholars. We also invite artists, activists, independent scholars, and community members to pitch us ideas for pieces relevant to the magazine’s focus on environmental issues.
We hope you’ll visit us regularly, subscribe, and enjoy what you read and experience here.
