Behind the Beauty of Orchids, Centuries of Violence
Following orchids in The Farming of Bones, a novel by Edwidge Danticat, exposes tangled webs of care, violence, and the lasting power of the colonial imagination.
Tagged: Ideas of Nature
A Firsthand Account of Finding Nature on a U.S. Military Base
We need to expand our ideas of nature to include the battlefield. A historian explains why we should view soldiers’ daily lives as part of the natural world.
In Annihilation, the Revolution Will Not Be Human
A science fiction novel offers a genre-bending perspective that helps us think about wildness, purity, and invasion in new and strange ways.
Thoreau, Now More than Ever: A Conversation with Laura Dassow Walls and Daegan Miller
Are there better ethics than hope? Two scholars with new books about the author of Walden reflect on Henry David Thoreau’s environmental ethic, flirtations with despair, and anarchist politics.
“Working at the Edge” Photo Contest Winners
The winners of Edge Effects’ photo contest capture a variety of dramatic, surprising, and precarious border crossings from around the world.
Faculty Favorites: Books to Add to Your Shelf This Spring
Five professors recommend an eclectic set of environmentally focused books about animals, shopping malls, feral children, and more.
When We Repealed Daylight Saving Time
In 1922, 16 states and 137 cities followed Daylight Saving Time—and the rest of the country did not. Repealing Daylight Saving Time only made the map of national temporal borders more complex, causing heartbreak and confusion at the border.
Ursula K. Heise Thinks Beyond Melancholy: A Review of “Imagining Extinction”
Extinction stories have a flavor, and it tastes like melancholy. A new book asks what different narratives we could bring to the table.
Ecological Homes: Making Women, Men, and Nature
At the New Alchemy Institute’s bioshelters, green technologies promised social revolution. But women still found themselves stuck with the dishes.
Cottonwoods in Concrete: A Call for Collaborative Survival among Ruins
A forest sprouting from a levee in eastern Washington offers a model for flood management, if only we notice it.
