Category: Commentary
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Defending Tomorrow Today
in CommentaryIn light of the recent Global Witness report, Rob Nixon discusses the dangers environmental defenders face and their role as frontline workers in the fight against climate breakdown and zoonotic pandemics.
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Beyond the “Murder Hornet” Panic
in CommentaryRemember murder hornets? Samuel Klee tells their story a different way—with less panic and more attention to settler-colonial plantation ecologies.
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The Land Remembers Native Histories
in CommentaryThe University of Wisconsin–Madison was constructed through the erasure of Native monuments. But the land remembers. Graduate student Kendra Greendeer (Ho-Chunk) considers histories of settler erasure and contemporary efforts to commemorate Indigenous presence.
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Can Aquaculture Make Seafood Sustainable?
in CommentaryAquaculture is bringing seafood out of the sea. It might be a good idea.
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There’s No Escaping Oil, Even in the Wild Arctic
in CommentaryA renewed push to open the Arctic to oil and gas drilling leads one writer to investigate petromodernity, arguing that oil flows through ideas of the environment as much as it does through the economy.
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There’s Nothing “Natural” About Binary Gender
in CommentaryIn 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.
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Citation in the #MeToo Era
in CommentaryAn 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.
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The Year of the Plastic Straw Ban
in CommentaryControversial plastic straw bans continue to make headlines. A cultural analysis helps weigh the most recent legislation and asks whether bans on single-use plastics offer a path toward a more sustainable future or a distraction from systemic change.
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The Swiftness of Glaciers: Language in a Time of Climate Change
in CommentaryAs 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.
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The Monuments We Never Built
in CommentaryCharlottesville reminds us that a full reckoning with our landscapes of commemoration requires we ask not only what stories they tell, but also what stories they don’t.