The Fragile Society We’ve Built from Rocks: A Conversation With Gregory Cushman
Fertilizers, computers, gasoline, and other parts of our everyday lives come from irreplaceable deposits found in the Earth. But how long will they last?
Tagged: History
Rural People and Academic Elites Saved Higher Education Once. They Can Do It Again.
Rural resentment is nothing new. When one university reckoned with it a century ago, it convinced farmers that the university worked for them—and improved itself in the process.
How’d We Get So Cheap? A Conversation with Bryant Simon
The author of “The Hamlet Fire” discusses a deadly blaze at a chicken-processing facility and the logics of cheapness which provided the kindling.
An Environmental Playlist of the Twentieth Century
Take a trip through the twentieth century to explore the development of environmental themes through popular music.
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.
The American Recycling Myth
Why do we recycle? American consumers have learned to think of recycling as a local activity, but a recent Chinese ban on imported solid waste may force us to see the ways that recycling is a global industry.
Faculty Favorites: Fall into these Environmental Excursions
Faculty from Idaho to Washington, DC chime in on favorite environmentally focused books they are excited to teach this fall.
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.
The Monuments We Never Built
Charlottesville 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.
Seven Ways of Looking at an Eclipse
We know the effects total solar eclipses have on birds, squirrels, and spiders. But what do they do to people?
