an artwork showing a red building on the left, and a yellow wild animal on the right.

The City Through More-Than-Human Eyes

Indian artist Jagannath Panda is known for his play imagination of urban life. Sreyashi Ray explores how it uses rich textiles and figures to highlight the intersection of human and other-than-human issues that resonate with viewers from all around the world.
a birthday cake shaped like a camp site

Ten Hidden Gems From the Edge Effects Archives

The editorial board recommends environmental readings from the archives—on topics ranging from the Anthropocene to environmental art to blue humanities.
Gender and Glacial Agency in The Ice Sings Back

Gender and Glacial Agency in The Ice Sings Back

Maria Tane reviews feminist geographer and glaciologist M Jackson's debut novel, which reveals a profound connection between melting ice and missing women.
Into the Not-So-Wild World of Pokémon

Into the Not-So-Wild World of Pokémon

From adorable pets to exotic safaris, the Pokémon universe offers a sprawling jungle gym for players. Writer and gamer Nate Carlin gives a guided tour of what he calls the franchise's naive ecotopia.
Portrait of white woman in a gown, a young African boy, and a parrot showing multispecies friendship.

The Boy and The Bird

Nancy J. Jacobs explores the thought-provoking, tragic relationship between enslaved Africans and the African grey parrot in eighteenth century European portraiture.
Werewolves Within is the Pipeline Horror Film You Didn’t Know You Needed

Werewolves Within is the Pipeline Horror Film You Didn’t Know You Needed

Werewolves and petro-masculinity and extractive capitalism, oh my! In this review of a recent horror-comedy film, Addie Hopes and Richelle Wilson examine an overlooked aspect of the story. Where pipelines go, murder follows.
On The Alchemy of Soil

On The Alchemy of Soil

After a long and dirty journey, artist Tory Tepp has found community in the creation of the Sauk County ARK earthwork.
Person walking with a herd of cattle down a road

Exploring Oaxaca’s Peri-Urban Landscape

In this photo essay, Joseph Heathcott captures edge ecologies and life in between at Oaxaca's urban-rural interface.
BBC's The Green Planet Puts Plants in the Spotlight

BBC’s The Green Planet Puts Plants in the Spotlight

James Weldon reviews BBC’s docuseries The Green Planet, and considers whether new film technology can help humans better understand plants.
Turtle shell on soil with yellow and pink flowers on it

Honoring Animal Lives through Memorials

Amanda Stronza creates memorials for animals killed on roads and sidewalks by pairing striking photographs with dedicatory text. Through this practice, she invites onlookers to "see, care, and be reminded of the bonds we share with the nonhuman world."
Get Playful With These Six Environmental Board Games

Get Playful With These Six Environmental Board Games

Eco-themed board games are having a moment. Nate Carlin traces how these games have evolved from using nature as an inviting aesthetic to more fully incorporating ecological principles in game design and play.
Black and white photo of brick wall with "Fallout Shelter" sign

American Apocalyptic: A Conversation with Jessica Hurley

Beyond "doom bros" and end-of-history narratives, Jessica Hurley's new book looks to the stories Black, queer, Indigenous, and Asian American writers tell about nuclear infrastructures and the radical politics of futurelessness.
Three drawings of a volcano erupting, palm tree and woman standing near the volcano

Visualizing the Volcanic Caribbean

Weaving a reflective essay with a virtual gallery, artist Kwynn Johnson draws upon the rich history of volcano-inspired art to creatively reimagine the twenty-first-century Caribbean landscape.
Diving into the Aquatic Depths of East Asian Ecohorror

Diving into the Aquatic Depths of East Asian Ecohorror

In ecohorror movies like Shin Godzilla and The Host, pollution fights back in the form of rampaging sea monsters. Lindsay S. R. Jolivette traces the significance of water in these films—and what it reveals about our worst nightmares.
Performers on a stage in front of a large elephant photo

The Unreliable Bestiary: A Conversation with Deke Weaver

Performance artist Deke Weaver gives a behind-the-scenes look at Unreliable Bestiary, an expansive multimedia project that tells the stories of endangered animal species.
Three smokestacks with black smoke, mountains in the background. Video game still.

Finding Connection and Resisting Extraction in Quarantine Gaming

During the COVID-19 pandemic, video games offered Nat Mesnard and many others an escape from isolation. But the false promise of endless productivity in factory building games like Satisfactory ensnared them in a myth of capitalist "progress."
Close-up photograph of slender plant roots

The Roots of (Radical) Animism: A Conversation with Jemma Deer

In conversation with Shelby Brewster, Jemma Deer discusses her new book, Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World.
Shadowy figure points up at the night sky

Photographing Isolation and Connection in the Stars

Astrophotography saw Kaitlin Moore through months of COVID-19 lockdown, developing connections among the universe’s most isolated subjects.
Fountain and reflections at the Stravinsky Memorial

Where the Queer Wild Things Are

Can wildness be its own way of thinking and knowing? And where should we look to find out? Julia Dauer reviews Jack Halberstam's wide-ranging new book, Wild Things.
Large yellow bird holds teddy bear on an air plane

An Ecological Case for Cuteness

Many environmentalists are suspicious of cute mascots. Evelyn Ramiel invites us to open our hearts to cute characters that create ecologies of care.
Ruins of old house at night.

Nine Horror Films on Haunted Places and Contested Spaces

Feed your brain and your Halloween horror habit with these nine spooky film and TV recommendations with extra credit readings and eco-interpretations offered by Edge Effects board members.
Woman sits on green grass between a deer and a wolf. Lake and mountains in background.

How Wendy Red Star Decolonizes the Museum with Humor and Play

“When talking about Indigenous history you can just devastate yourself," says Apsáalooke artist Wendy Red Star. "And so, humor has been a way for me to cope with that." Drawing from an original interview with the artist, Nicole Seymour and Salma Monani examine how Red Star uses humor, play, and collaboration to subvert museum stereotypes of Indigenous peoples and reanimate Indigenous pasts—and futures—through art.
Large boiling vat with bucket

Fermentation, Rot, and Power in the Early Modern Atlantic

The histories of fermentation and its unruly twin, rot, provide key insights into race, power, and resistance on plantations in the Caribbean.
Infowhelm book cover

Making Meaning in an Age of Data: A Conversation with Heather Houser

In conversation with Min Hyoung Song, Heather Houser considers how stories and art make overwhelming scientific data meaningful—and how they trouble, interrogate, and transform it.
Two figures watch a sunset over mountains.

The Queer Ecology of Steven Universe

When the revolution is won, what comes next? In the popular Cartoon Network show Steven Universe, Gardiner Brown finds a model for queer environmental care.
What Happens When Gamers Become (Digital) Geoengineers?

What Happens When Gamers Become (Digital) Geoengineers?

Elon Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars may be decades away, but video games allow us to practice geoengineering here and now. Doron Darnov explores how digital terraforming both shapes and reflects our desires for worldmaking at (inter)planetary scales.
An oil palm plantation in Malaysia

Picturing the Plantation as a Site of Displacement

A photo essay by Christine Horn from her fieldwork in Sarawak, Borneo, shows how oil palm plantations rearrange and displace communities and landscapes.
Climate change activisit and environmental icon Greta Thunberg stands alone on a hill

Remixing Environmental Icons for a Better Future

Fifty years after the first Earth Day, how have environmental campaigns changed? Alexandra Lakind cautions against stereotypes that focus on the personal instead of the structural.
Making a Living with Salt in Divya Victor’s Kith

Making a Living with Salt in Divya Victor’s Kith

A poetic and visceral narrative of salt mining in Gujarat, India, Divya Victor’s Kith calls attention to the lives and deaths of salt farmers.
A black and white photograph of a road leading to a clearcut landscape

ClearCut – The Wages of Dominion

In ClearCut – The Wages of Dominion, photographer John Riggs presents a guided meditation about the cultural mindset behind clearcutting.
A wooden bookcase with jars of colorful plastic objects on the shelves

Art for Our Plastic Present

Natalie Wright reviews an exhibit on "Plastic Entanglements" at the Chazen Museum of Art which explores questions of our plastic, synthetic world.
Making Zines for Science: Five Questions for Christine Liu

Making Zines for Science: Five Questions for Christine Liu

Artist and neuroscientist Christine Liu shares her zines, Nicotine and The Opium Poppy, that explore the links between plants, drugs, and the brain.
Police and protestors stand off at Turtle Island

Drone Warriors: The Art of Surveillance and Resistance at Standing Rock

Part of the Water Protectors movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Drone Warriors use drone photography as a form of protest. An exhibit curated by Adrienne Keene and Gregory Hitch spotlights their work.
Man with flashlight in a field of rotted pumpkins at night.

Plant Monsters Turn Normal Upside Down

Julia Dauer argues that the plant monsters from the Netflix series Stranger Things share roots with 18th-century colonial terror of botanical powers. Unruly vegetation from the Upside Down calls for a wholesale reevaluation of normal in the contemporary US.
film still from midstream at twilight

Experimental Documentary Captures Oil Midstream

Steve Rowell’s film Midstream at Twilight uses drone photography to follow the toxic infrastructure of oil pipelines from source to refinery to gift shop.
A photo of a black metal sculpture, resembling a sea urchin, sitting in a grassy, empty lot along Braddock Avenue.

The Future of Landscape Architecture is TV

Inspired by TV as a medium, Marc Miller's course in landscape architecture has students make environmental fiction about the future rather than design for the present.
Painting of a woman in a row boat, a fish-shaped ship, and a large bird.

Whose Utopia? American Ecofascism Since the 1880s

A 19th-century novel about a (white) women's utopia at the center of the earth documents the long history of American eugenics and ecofascism.
An Instagram post of a glacier, with a caption: Yesterday the #NWProject was in Pond Inlet in Nunavut, learning about the Ikaarvik program, which trains Inuit youth to participate in scientific work and encourages visiting Arctic researchers to engage with the community. Also bearded seals! Narwhals! And $58 12-packs of soda! Please note that my FB live didn’t happen (satellite issues)—communication remains very very difficult in the Arctic (this is my thesis). Photos much compressed to make it possible to post. #nsffunded #changingArctic #Arctic #Nunavut #Climatechange

The Social Media of Polar Exploration

Hester Blum's new book, The News at the Ends of the Earth, explains why 19th-century newspapers printed on polar expeditions offer a model for communicating in the age of climate crisis.
Robert Macfarlane's portrait with a portion of the cover of Underland

Adventures in the Underland: A Conversation with Robert Macfarlane

Celebrated author Robert Macfarlane discusses his latest book, Underland, which journeys deep underground to look for answers.
A satellite image of the Mississippi River

Recording the Mississippi Soundscape: A Conversation with Monica Haller

Artist Monica Haller explores the Mississippi River as an Anthropocene site with intimate ties to her own family history. She records the underwater sounds of this historical waterway to trace connections between the river and legacies of slavery, philosophies of ownership, and environmental racism.
At the top a helicopter flies over a tank tunneling through the earth. Various armed persons and roosters are spaced above and below the tank.

Excavating Haitian Histories

Haitian political history, Taíno artifacts, colonial plantations, and even cholera bacteria leave their marks on the land in Kwynn Johnson's 30-foot panoramic drawing of Cap Haitien.
An old photo from the cover of Letters to Memory depicting two young girls in pink dresses and palm trees in the background.

What Counts as Environmental Storytelling: A Conversation with Karen Tei Yamashita

The award-winning author and Professor Emeritus of Literature and Creative Writing discusses storytelling during environmental crisis, legacies of Japanese incarceration, and why ethnographies are environmental writing.
Kim Stanley Robinson holds a microphone and in the background a satellite image of the earth is visible

There’s No Sheriff on This Planet: A Conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson

The acclaimed writer of the bestselling Mars trilogy and Red Moon models possible futures in his science fiction for a biosphere of eight billion people, seeking new solutions for global emergencies.
A woman in a brown sweater stand out on an open plain looking troubles while a three-piece band plays in the background.

Finally, a Funny Environmental Film

And it might just be the quirky, queered, Icelandic feminist ecowarrior movie you've been waiting for.
close up of heron's head

MetroCard Mosaics Celebrate Migration

In "A Manifesto about Migration, Freedom, and Diversity," one artist creates mosaics of New York's migratory birds from recycled MetroCards.
Greta LaFleur's book discusses the relationship between the natural world and sexuality. This painting depicts a fish skewered on a brach. The branch also holds a blue jay and many smaller purple, red, pink, blue, and yellow birds.

The Environmental Histories of Desire

Greta LaFleur’s new book, The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America, shows how desire was produced in surprising ways alongside taxonomies of plants and racial difference in early British colonial texts.
Alan C. Braddock

The Art of Nature’s Nation: A Conversation with Alan C. Braddock

What can art history tell us about how artists imagine, interpret, and bear witness to environmental change? The new exhibition Nature's Nation uses ecocritical art history to explore American environmental history and pose tough questions about what we need to do move forward.
A screen shot of the title screen of the movie Cooked.

Slow-Motion Disaster and Extreme Weather: Five Questions for Judith Helfand

The 1995 Chicago heat wave revealed how racism and poverty are the slow-motion disasters that become glaringly visible during extreme weather events. A new documentary film tells this story.
A screenshot of Walden, a Game shows a man standing by a boat on the shore of the pond.

The Rise of Green Games

Environmental video games like "Walden, A Game" are a growing trend. Can they creatively intervene in climate change debates and inspire environmental awareness?
Small conical red clay sculptures in a wooded lot.

How the Soil Remembers Plantation Slavery

What haunts the land? Artists R.L. Martens and Bii Robertson dig up the tangled history of "the vampire crop," slavery, and soil exhaustion in Maryland, revealing that the past is more present than you might think.
Ceramic and glass mosaics of two faces on a blue concrete wall

A Search for Repair in the Wake of the Plantation

An audio-visual essay by Deborah A. Thomas responds to the 2010 state of emergency in West Kingston, Jamaica, known as the "Tivoli Incursion" and asks how archiving affects—not just events—might be a way to re-imagine justice, politics, and repair.
A black and white etching of a flooded street with ships washing past buildings

Imagining a Green New Deal Through Climate Fiction

Is the Green New Deal real or science fiction? Kim Stanley Robinson's novel New York 2140 imagines a flooded world where climate action is unavoidable.
The Alchemy of Early Photography

The Alchemy of Early Photography

Four contemporary photographers use historical techniques to bring attention to the transient, illusory, and disposable items and people in our world. From tintype to cyanotype, these processes combine chemical knowledge and artistic insight.
A snowy desert plateau at sunrise

Weaving Diné Design from the Desert Landscape

A Diné (Navajo) artist finds inspiration in the Dinétah landscape of New Mexico where she grew up. Her artwork brings the language of Diné weaving to the fine art world.
Marie Kondo and interpreter arrive at a suburban house, walking up the driveway

What Marie Kondo Could Do for the Environment

Does tidying up always mean throwing away? Marie Kondo's new Netflix show sparks joy and skepticism in a scholar researching waste.
Crisis and Creativity in Environmental Pedagogy

Crisis and Creativity in Environmental Pedagogy

Given the often-debilitating realities of environmental issues, how can teachers build an environmental pedagogy that inspires creative change?
A photograph of a tree branch with many initials carved into the bark

Embracing Identity in the Environmental Classroom

We form attachments to the places around us, and they shape our sense of who we are. An educator uses that environmental identity to spark action.
Portrait of a Eddy Harris in a black beret and a red and black flannel shirt open over a grey t-shirt looking at the camera without smiling with a big lake in the background under a grey sky.

Navigating Race on the Mississippi River: A Conversation with Eddy Harris

When you venture into the great unknown, you often have to rely on the generosity of strangers. Eddy Harris reflects on race and outdoor recreation, ecological conservation, and the elusive idea of America as he discusses his film, River to the Heart.
A series of differently shaped laser cut and engraved wood seals are arranged on a surface.

There’s Nothing “Natural” About Binary Gender

In light of the US government's controversial proposal to define gender as a "biological fact," a trans scholar and artist critiques the use of “nature” to limit the messy, multidimensional reality of gender identity and expression.
A raccoon sits with its legs splayed in the sand.

Feeling Kinky about Environmentalism: A Conversation with Nicole Seymour

Mainstream environmental discourse often employs emotions like fear, guilt, and outrage. But what about irony, humor, and irreverence? What feelings and what people get left out of environmentalism when we have such a limited emotional range?
A colorful drawing with green fields, pink mountains, and a collection of human and animal figures.

Weathering This World with Comics

Comics and graphic novels help us picture new worlds and imagine how to save our own. Four writers recommend their favorites.
Black and white artist rendering of ecohorror icon Godzilla attacking a city

Eleven Ecohorror Films to Creep You Out

Curious about ecohorror? An ecocritic recommends classic, campy, and little-known films that play with our culture’s deepest fears about nature. A few of these creature features just might get under your skin—literally.
A stop sign scorched from the Hayman Fire of 2002 still marks an entry onto the 9J road in Pike National Forest.

Fire and the Impermanence of Landscape

Photography is both an act of memory and a way to perceive change. For one writer, returning home means facing a landscape transformed by fire, climate change, and time.
Kate Durbin, artist, takes a selfie while standing in thigh-height waves and wearing a yellow plastic dress with Hello Kitty icons and a long, green wavy wig. In the background, other women wearing white underwear and rainbow-hued long wigs also take selfies while standing in the waves.

The Pleasures of Teaching Plastic

Plastic shapes us even as it contributes to our destruction. A performance studies scholar shares her creative approach to teaching about plastic and identity in an unavoidably plastic world.
A collage of seven books covers to cite in the #metoo era

Citation in the #MeToo Era

An ecocritic had just finished a book chapter on Sherman Alexie’s poetry when accusations about his sexual misconduct went viral last spring. She asks if environmental humanities scholars should continue to engage with the work of abusers, and why certain writers and scholars come to dominate our archives in the first place.
From the cover of Lauren Groff's book Florida, the orange silhouette of a panther is set against a black background with white capitalized letters spelling FLORIDA

Why All Fiction Should Be Climate Fiction: A Conversation with Lauren Groff

How does the celebrated author of the new story collection "Florida" write books in a poisoned, warming world? "By being constantly, constantly angry. All day long."
A young woman in a black and white polka dot dress stands in the woods. She holds a small television in front of her face. The featured image for a post on environmental themes in pop culture.

Watching That? Read This!

Many new movies and TV shows have complex things to say about the entanglement of culture, history, and environment. We recommend the best scholarship to help you decode them.
A peacock stands on reddish earth in the center of the image. His briight blue and green plumage fills the enttire frame.

Birds on the Brain in the Ancient World

In ancient Greece and Rome, birds filled more than the skies. Jeremy Mynott’s new book explores birds in ancient imaginations and the science, pastimes, art, and literature they inspired.
Lynn Keller stands in front of several lines of poetry written in grey words on a wall. The words "en-wrap" "swaddled" "holdfast" and "Buddha" are emboldened.

Why We Need Experimental Poetry in the Anthropocene: A Conversation with Lynn Keller

A new generation of experimental poets responds to the growing awareness of human impacts on the planet with work that challenges traditional nature poetry and poetic form.
Handheld DDT pump, with red white and blue label with visible wear

A History of the Anthropocene in Objects

In this book teaser, objects like monkey wrenches and pesticide pumps help narrate a fragmentary history of the Anthropocene.
Learning to Love Human Traces in Wild Places

Learning to Love Human Traces in Wild Places

A photographer explores an aesthetic that finds beauty in the physical alterations people make to natural landscapes, from Yellowstone to a state park in Ohio.
Rachel Carson sitting on a dock next to a large boat writing on a notepad with a pen and looking off into the distance.

Rachel Carson Joins the Literary Canon: A Conversation with Sandra Steingraber

The acclaimed author and activist, who has edited the new Library of America edition of "Silent Spring," reflects on how Carson changed her style of writing to become "defense attorney for the Earth."
A Pig Born a Commodity, Raised as a Friend in Neflix’s Okja

A Pig Born a Commodity, Raised as a Friend in Neflix’s Okja

To some, this pig is family. To others, she's food. In a review of Netflix's Okja, a geographer explores how the film's representation of super pigs and human-animal friendships asks us to rethink our relationships with nonhuman animals. 
One of the residences made hospitable by the eucalyptus grove. The eucalyptus is visible in the background on the right side of the photo.

The Avant-Garde Meets Ecology in the Open City

Communal living and artistic experimentation have thrived at the Open City for over forty years. In the face of pollution and environmental degradation, the collective of poets, artists, and a lone ecologist are reimagining green design.
A panoramic photograph of a desert canyon with mountains in the background.

A Nation’s Shadow at Bears Ears National Monument

In a series of photographs, a scholar and wilderness guide meditates on wild places and the politics of resource extraction in southern Utah.
a large glacier's edge

The Swiftness of Glaciers: Language in a Time of Climate Change

As the climate changes, so does our language. Melting glaciers force us to rethink the metaphors we use to make sense of the world around us.
A stone hut with a yellow door is framed by two trees.

From Herders to Hikers, the Shifting Lives of Scottish Bothies

Camping in a highland hut called a bothy, once home to Scottish hill farmers, a photographer finds kinship amidst wild space.
The writer Kim Fu, author of "The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore." Photo by Laura D'Alessandro.

Nine Women Who Are Rewriting the Environment

As we continue to celebrate Women's History Month, here is a list of new and recent work by women writers whose environmental imaginations keep us all inspired, impassioned, and ready for whatever comes next.
cement and wood barrier in front of field with shrubbery

Photographing Plutonium’s Invisible Legacy

In a series of photographs, a landscape designer and artist uncovers the invisible toxic legacies of nuclear technology in Hanford, WA.
Two large yellow and red orchid blooms appear in the foreground. A small hummingbird hovers nearby. Tropical plants appear in the background.

Behind the Beauty of Orchids, Centuries of Violence

Following orchids in The Farming of Bones, a novel by Edwidge Danticat, exposes tangled webs of care, violence, and the lasting power of the colonial imagination.
Natalie Portman inspects a crocodile in the film Annihilation

In Annihilation, the Revolution Will Not Be Human

A science fiction novel offers a genre-bending perspective that helps us think about wildness, purity, and invasion in new and strange ways.
The protester's sign, which reads "Climate Emergency," takes up the whole frame. The sign includes the shape of the Earth, an orange and red background, and stark black lettering in the foreground.

The Rise of the Climate Change Novel

What happens when our changing world starts to look more and more unreal? The recent boom in novels that depict climate change pits the real against the magical, surreal, and fantastical.
On the left side, an image of Santo Toribio on a pale blue backround, ringed by nopal cacti. On the right side, "Oracion Por El Emigrante", a Spanish-language prayer for immigrants.

The Violent Environments of the Mexico-U.S. Border

An artist honors the struggles of undocumented immigrants in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands and shows the emotional and environmental toll of immigration policies.
"Working at the Edge" Photo Contest Winners

“Working at the Edge” Photo Contest Winners

The winners of Edge Effects’ photo contest capture a variety of dramatic, surprising, and precarious border crossings from around the world.
A sterling silver sculpture of a honeybee

Finding Hope and Community with Honeybees: A Conversation with Heather Swan

The decline of honeybees is cause for alarm and a symptom of global biodiversity loss. Beekeepers, however, find creative ways to build relationships with honeybees and steward their hives.
Designing Seeds and Laboratories for the Green Revolution

Designing Seeds and Laboratories for the Green Revolution

The modernism of the Green Revolution is visible not only in the genes of seeds developed by agronomists, but also in the architecture of the campuses and laboratories where those seeds were engineered.
An aerial view of Fordlandia

Five Reasons Why Henry Ford’s Failure in Brazil Still Matters Today

In this quick guide to Henry Ford's lasting impact in the Amazon, the director of Beyond Fordlândia shares the untold stories of violence, pollution, and activism he uncovered while filming the new documentary.
Erratic Monuments to a Melting World

Erratic Monuments to a Melting World

As glaciers melt, they leave behind abandoned rocks and other erratics. This photo essay of the Alaskan wilderness explores how glacial erratics are time travelers, treasure troves, reliquaries, and rubble.
Jill Pelto illustration with the ocean in the foreground and two layers of glacier in the left rear, with the horizon shaped by a line graph moving down from left to right. Four suns are arranged in an arc in the background.

Apocalypse in Watercolor

To reach a broader audience, one artist and physical scientist takes data on environmental catastrophe and renders it beautiful.
A portrait of a young Napoleon Bonaparte in military dress starting at the viewer with a white mountain and blue clouds behind him.

Painting an Empire: Landscapes of Napoleon’s Dreams in Haiti

French landscape painting during the Haitian Revolution lays bare colonial concern for controlling both people and the environment.
Zozobra & Me: Performance and Place at the Santa Fe Fiesta

Zozobra & Me: Performance and Place at the Santa Fe Fiesta

A meditation on how the annual burning of a 51-foot marionette forges connections to a city and its complex, violent past.
Knowing Prairies: An Essay in Comic Form

Knowing Prairies: An Essay in Comic Form

What can the world's first restored prairie tell us about living with the land? The University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum inspires one artist to reflect on ecological restoration and what we call nature.
The Art of Anxious Environments

The Art of Anxious Environments

Through art, Yayoi Kusama takes an extreme challenge, mental illness, and connects to millions, inviting viewers into the curious and profound beauty of her interior world. Encountering Kusama's art inspired the author of this essay to reach through her own "a wall of silence" and use art to express her anxious environment.
Why We Don't Like Wild Women

Why We Don’t Like Wild Women

In American popular culture, from the colonial era to the present, women who venture out into wild places cannot escape the strictures of gender.
Toxic Bodies and the Wetter, Better Future of "Mad Max: Fury Road"

Toxic Bodies and the Wetter, Better Future of “Mad Max: Fury Road”

Most Hollywood catastrophe films offer neat endings and the promise of a fresh start. Fury Road asks what happens when the broken world cannot be made whole.
Humility and Hubris: A Review of Luc Jacquet's "Ice and the Sky"

Humility and Hubris: A Review of Luc Jacquet’s “Ice and the Sky”

Even with the impacts of the Anthropocene, it would be hubristic not to realize that ice and sky will far outlast anything so puny as humanity.
The Truthiness of Nature Films: A Review of Perrin and Cluzaud's "Seasons"

The Truthiness of Nature Films: A Review of Perrin and Cluzaud’s “Seasons”

The makers of "Winged Migration" return with a new film that challenges viewers’ expectations of authenticity in nature documentaries.
Expressing Extinction: A Conversation with Anna Lehner

Expressing Extinction: A Conversation with Anna Lehner

During this period of rapid political change, glass and Morse code provide mediums for reflection on the environment and extinction.
Transparent Walls: The Work of Do Ho Suh

Transparent Walls: The Work of Do Ho Suh

Four graduate students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison share their reflections on the work of Do Ho Suh.
Domestic Labor: Excavating the Public Sphere

Excavating the Private Sphere

A photo essay of mid-century domestic relics open a window on a woman's hard, heroic, uncelebrated life.
Beautiful Resilience: Conversations after an Earthquake

Beautiful Resilience: Conversations after an Earthquake

A storyteller's account of Manabu Ikeda's pen-and-ink commemoration of Japan's earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in 2011.
Biosphere 2: Why an Eccentric Ecological Experiment Still Matters 25 Years Later

Biosphere 2: Why an Eccentric Ecological Experiment Still Matters 25 Years Later

Four scholars and one of the original "biospherians" offer their takes on perhaps the largest private science experiment in history.
Turning Toward

Turning Toward

A writer's poignant reflections on care and healing. What might happen if we all turned toward, instead of away?
At the Confluence of Art and Science

At the Confluence of Art and Science

Ecologists and artists work together to give voice to Wisconsin waterways while a social scientist observes their collaboration.
Review: Adam Trexler's Anthropocene Fictions

Review: Adam Trexler’s Anthropocene Fictions

A new book surveys 150 novels about climate change and makes the case for the virtues of cli-fi.
Rhythms of Time Along the Water

Rhythms of Time Along the Water

The Center for Culture, History, and Environment’s Place-Based Workshop on the Mississippi River this summer inspires reflections on Mali’s critically important Niger Delta floodplain.
Rethinking Frank Lloyd Wright in the 21st Century

Rethinking Frank Lloyd Wright in the 21st Century

Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to embrace the natural world and push the boundaries of modern design. What do these conflicting desires mean for environmental teaching and thinking today?
Same Place, Different Photograph

Same Place, Different Photograph

Repeat photography is used by a range of scientists and artists as a form of data collection, but also raises deeper questions about the nature of truth.
Environmental Complacency and the Rise of Distraction; or, How I Learned to Embrace Worrying and Love Movies

Environmental Complacency and the Rise of Distraction; or, How I Learned to Embrace Worrying and Love Movies

How do species extinctions past and present affect our daily lives? What can we do to connect to environmental change?
Four Greco-Roman Perspectives on Humans and the Environment

Four Greco-Roman Perspectives on Humans and the Environment

What did ancient people think about human impacts on the environment? Four passages offer perspectives from Greece and Rome.
On the move in Sinoe County, Liberia. Loring Whitman, October 18, 1926. Indiana University Liberian Collections

A Liberian Journey

Long-forgotten film footage launches a collaborative recollection of history and memory, and gives new meaning to the past in post-conflict Liberia.
Rethinking Girodet's Portrait of Citizen Belley

Rethinking Girodet’s Portrait of Citizen Belley

A late eighteenth-century painting of a moment that never happened illuminates our complex struggles with how to “deal with” the past.
Alan Bennett: An Ecological Storyteller

Alan Bennett: An Ecological Storyteller

An ecologist channels a lifetime of studying birds into intricate wood carvings.
Chloroform and Butcher Birds: Violence in Late 19th-Century Children's Literature

Chloroform and Butcher Birds: Violence in Late 19th-Century Children’s Literature

Children's novels from the nature study movement contain strikingly violent episodes, a fact that pushes us to rethink our understanding of period environmental ethics.
Tales from Tales

Tales from Tales

Highlights from the 2015 Tales from Planet Earth film festival.
One Community and its River: An Artist Roundtable

One Community and its River: An Artist Roundtable

Artists reflect on their collaborative installation and performance on the banks of the Chester River.
Stopping by Working Woods on a Snowy Evening

Stopping by Working Woods on a Snowy Evening

A take on Robert Frost's famous poem, adapted to reflect changes in Wisconsin forest ownership and conservation.
Rhythm by the Riverside: An Interview with Cassie Meador

Rhythm by the Riverside: An Interview with Cassie Meador

In this interview, dancer and choreographer Cassie Meador discusses her work with Dance Exchange, and especially their innovative Moving Field Guide program.
Everyday Paths of Water in the City

Everyday Paths of Water in the City

How do people encounter water every day in São Paulo, and how can those encounters suggest opportunities for dealing with water's scarcity?
Hip-Hop and Environmental Health: An Interview with Dr. Sarah Lappas

Hip-Hop and Environmental Health: An Interview with Dr. Sarah Lappas

Far from just a form of entertainment, Dr. Sarah Lappas explains how hip-hop can empower both artists and audiences to think more critically about their environments.
The Faces of Itaipu: Community, Memory, and Struggle in Rural Brazil

The Faces of Itaipu: Community, Memory, and Struggle in Rural Brazil

A photo essay explores the realities of life and struggle in rural Brazil.
Wooten wood-burning the treaty into the eighth bundle at the UW/Native Nations Summit on Environment and Health. Photo by Jim Escalante.

The Art of Offering: A Woodworker’s Lessons on Collaboration

What can art teach us about fieldwork? Sometimes the stories we tell belong to others.
Talking Trash with Josh Lepawsky

Talking Trash with Josh Lepawsky

A drawn-out interview with Josh Lepawsky on the politics, flows, and research practices around electronic waste.
Down the Peter Rabbit Hole: Literary Adventures for Little Ones

Down the Peter Rabbit Hole: Literary Adventures for Little Ones

CHE affiliates in Zoology, History, and English recommend children's literature for readers of all ages interested in the non-human world.
Placing the Golden Spike: Uneasy Temporality in the Anthropocene

Placing the Golden Spike: Uneasy Temporality in the Anthropocene

A new exhibit at the UW-Milwaukee Institute for Visual Arts offers a range of imaginative visualizations for the crisis of the Anthropocene.
Our Climatic Fate? Oreskes and Conway's "Collapse of Western Civilization"

Our Climatic Fate? Oreskes and Conway’s “Collapse of Western Civilization”

Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s tale of our catastrophic future is a provocative hybrid of scholarship and science fiction that's great for the classroom.
<em>Wrenched</em>: Edward Abbey and <em>The Monkey Wrench Gang</em> on the Big Screen

Wrenched: Edward Abbey and The Monkey Wrench Gang on the Big Screen

The new film "Wrenched," directed by ML Lincoln, explores the legacy of Edward Abbey as author and action-based environmentalist in the American southwest.
The Arboretum Edge

The Arboretum Edge

A gallery of photographs that meditate on the lesser-known corners of the UW-Madison Arboretum.
Exquisite Gestures: Meditation / Labor

Exquisite Gestures: Meditation / Labor

A three-channel video art installation meditates on how everyday gestures, and the labor they perform, become exquisite.
Narayan Mahon’s "Lands in Limbo"

Narayan Mahon’s “Lands in Limbo”

Narayan Mahon's photography explores the individual, local challenges of unrecognized statehood.
An Eye for Winter: In Praise of Local Beauty

An Eye for Winter: In Praise of Local Beauty

What is there to love about winter in a frigid place like Wisconsin? Lots, if you're willing to look.
Stoughton

Whatever. . . Never Mind, or Old Torvald Skaalen Died on Saturday

A story at the intersection of truth, lies, memory, and imagination set in the Norwegian-American cultural landscape of Stoughton, Wisconsin.
New York

The Close City: An Exhibit on Nature in New York

This photo series explores the tensions between permanence and transience in New York City's urban landscapes.
Eight films

The “Eyes” Don’t Always Have It: Eight Films to Change Your Perspective on the World

Feeling trapped in an altogether human view of the world? These eight short films prompt viewers to, for a moment, abandon the familiar and instead examine issues like time and scale through surprising non-human perspectives.
Fire

Living By Fire

Every winter millions of Americans gather around their televisions to watch a fireplace. What is it about a fire that we love so much? And what is it like to live through a Wisconsin winter heated by fire?
Daniel Arsham

The Future Relics of Daniel Arsham

What can James Franco and a fossilized camera tell us about geology, labor, and objectivity?
Jennifer Colten Wasteland Ecology 9522

Photographing Urban Margins: Jennifer Colten’s “Wasteland Ecology”

Jennifer Colten's photographs of wasteland environments challenge some of our deepest cultural values about nature and landscape.
Shored Up: The Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy at the Rockaway Peninsula

Shored Up: The Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy at the Rockaway Peninsula

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy made devastating landfall at the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City, offering forebodings of still more powerful storms to come.
Bizarre Beauty… in the Background: Video Game Nature in Final Fantasy XII

Bizarre Beauty… in the Background: Video Game Nature in Final Fantasy XII

Can playing video games encourage gamers to think differently about their relationships to the non-human world? A close study of Final Fantasy XII shows how video games represent nature—and argues for ways they could be improved from an environmentalist standpoint.
Smolensk: A Mosaic of Memorials

Smolensk: A Mosaic of Memorials

The city of Smolensk is a memorial to Russia's history: the old Rus’, the Imperial, the Soviet, and the beginnings of a new post-Soviet.
Funny environmental films

Serious Laughs: Environmental Films That Provoke Thought . . . and Chuckles

Environmental filmmakers can’t just rely on intellectual proof—they also must connect emotionally. These eight tales successfully use humor to reach their audiences.