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.
Category: Essays
Fences Tell a Story of Land Changes on the Navajo Nation
For Kelsey Dayle John (Diné), fences provide a site for reflecting on family, history, culture, and Navajo relationships to land and animals.
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?
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.
This Shark Can Outlast Nuclear Waste. But Will It?
This mysterious deep-sea shark is built to live centuries. Will it survive to tell the tale of the Anthropocene? Sadie E. Hale considers the Greenland shark, nuclear waste, and ocean plastics, showing how their sclaes of time and space converge.
The Environmental Injustices of Forced Migration
Guadalupe Remigio Ortega shares her family’s histories and describes how Mixtec forced migrations are part of a global story of environmental injustice.
Keeping Time with Colombian Plantation Calendars
Timothy Lorek compares two calendars from Colombia that offer competing visions of plantation presents and agricultural futures.
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.
Composting’s Colonial Roots and Microbial Offshoots
Current methods of composting came out of colonial plantation agriculture, but have become a key way of practicing polyculture and imagining multispecies communities.
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.
