Category: Essays

Sand and machine on top of red brick wall.

Essays / Poetry

Unruly Sediments

Jac Common & Katy Lewis Hood trace marine aggregates dredging in UK coastal waters across multiple scales, arguing that this extractive industry needs to be situated in colonial and capitalist ocean histories and presents.

orange sunset over a lake with trees in the foreground

Essays

Change of Air Travel & The Commodification of Leisure

What does turn-of-the-century “Change of Air” travel reveal about the role of vacationing in U.S. culture and society today? Alexis Schmidt examines the historical transition of Change of Air from a legitimate medical prescription into a commodified and efficient vacation on the coast—a cultural attitude that persists in “health” vacation narratives to this day.

group of people walking a parade wearing brightly colored clothing, driving a truck with a banner that reads "radical faeries"

Essays

Seance, Queer Climate Activism, and the Radical Faeries

Could seance be more than just a party trick? Sam Bean, Alison Schultz, Carmen Warner, and Barbara Leckie unpack its overlooked political history, including how the queer group Radical Faeries used seances to articulate an egalitarian, environmentally-connected identity.

a field of pine trees burned down with lines in the soil where they once stood

Essays

Does the U.S. Have a Fire Problem?

Richard Bednarski connects the forest fires of 1910 to the subsequent media-driven age of fire exclusion policy, despite scientific evidence for fire inclusion. Did years of this practice worsen the United States’s “fire problem” today?

An clear-cut field with muddy ground used for monocropping, some trees in the distance.

Essays

Mourning Waste in the Anthropocene

Sophie Chao traces how Marind People of West Papua suffer the effects of monoculture toxicity while also mourning for the waste it produces.

A black rhino stands alone in a grassland savannah

Essays

Conserving Biodiversity without Preserving Settler Ecologies

Charis Enns & Brock Bersaglio use Laikipia County, Kenya to trace connections between settler colonial power and conservation, offering an “other” way of maintaining biodiversity that prioritizes Indigenous Peoples and their endangered livestock species.