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.
Tagged: History
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.
Managing the Globe after Empire
New books by Perrin Selcer and Quinn Slobodian show how ideas about the global environment and global economy took shape in response to the end of empire.
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.
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.
Hey Snow! It’s Not You, It’s Us
From toxic street slush to plowed-in cars, winter can be frustrating. But it doesn’t have to be. A historian uncovers 19th-century lessons for working with—not against—the snow.
Plantation Legacies
The Anthropocene gives a name to human-caused environmental change. The Plantationocene puts colonialism, capitalism, and enduring racial hierarchies at the center of the conversation and asks what past and future modes of resistance might emerge.
Tobacco’s World of Racial Capitalism: A Conversation with Nan Enstad
A historian planned a small study of cigarette culture. But she ended up uncovering a transnational network of seeds, plants, knowledge, and racist ideologies, and writing a book that transforms how we conceive of corporations and empire.
Earth First! and the Ethics of American Environmentalism
Why were American radical environmental movements able to gain political and philosophical ground in the second half of the 20th century? Keith Woodhouse looks at this question through the history of Earth First! and its legacy today.
W. E. B. Du Bois and the American Environment
Du Bois, born 150 years ago, was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. But his environmental thought remains underappreciated.
