Troubling Time

Few things have puzzled, terrified, inspired, and frustrated human societies over time as much as time itself. Whether mourning or reveling in the past or dreading or anticipating the future, time shapes lives and opportunities, emotions and perceptions. It shapes how every society and culture understands and interacts with the world around it. Thus, in few areas is the role and complexity of time more visible than in discussions and conceptualizations of “the environment.” In this special series, Edge Effects shares writings that interrogate environmental ideas, spaces, processes, and problems through the lens of temporality.

Series editors: Rebecca Laurent, Rudy Molinek, Samm Newton, Prerna Rana, and Weishun Lu

fossilized whale hone erected on a cliff

The Matter with Time

Monika Szuba confronts deep time through the examination of decay, between what is real and what is synthetic. In this, ...

bouquet on headstone on grass

Grave Decoration and Deep Time: A Poem

Inspired by embalming practices and artificial flowers in graveyards, Madeleine Bavley pens a poem exploring how we might trouble time ...

The medieval furrow field described by the author. A green grassy field under a blue sky with an old looking building in the background

Oxen Time, Multispecies Moments, and a Furrowed Field

In this entry to the Troubling Time special series, Caroline Abbott explores a medieval furrow near her home in Cambridge ...

A flock of sheep walking on a dry and barren landscape along with two male pastoralists holding sticks.

What Time is the Nomad?

Natasha Maru engages with the pastoralist temporalities as experienced by Rabari nomads in Kachchh, India. This narrative ethnographic account highlights ...

A glass terrarium-like installation stands among yellow and red plants in autumn.

The Deep Roots of Plant Time

Yota Batsaki explores the ways Kapwani Kiwanga's sculpture "On Growth" converges the past and the present, challenging human temporalities through ...

Hand drawing of a fictional map, above which are the words "The End of Flatland"

Climate Crisis Meets Flatland’s Multidimensional Imaginaries

Edwin A. Abbott nineteenth-century novel Flatland is often described as a science (or mathematical) fiction. Valeria Zambianchi argues that it ...

A sculpture with two long mosaic pieces of browns, grays, and blacks reaches toward the sky. The sculpture is surrounded by a ring of rust-colored rocks.

Memorializing Wildfire at the Playground

Jessica George interrogates the politics of seemingly apolitical wildfire memorials and examines how climate change-related art challenge the timelessness of ...

colorful joss papers

Navigating Eco-Grief with Ancestral Grieving Practices

Eco-grief can feel isolating, but Guevara Han and Rae Jing Han draw on Filipino and Chinese ancestral practices to develop ...

A small fishing boat floats on a still, sunny morning sea, with large rocks in the foreground and ice glaciers behind.

“Buying Time,” and Other Charismatic Temporalities of Climate Change

Mark Carey explores the themes of out of time, accelerating time, and buying time in current climate change discourse, arguing ...

Various documents and a black and white polaroid sit on a counter, each has visible burning around the edges.

Archives, Aldo Leopold, and an Age of Fire

Dylan Couch traces the complex connections between Aldo Leopold's conservation land ethic, worsening wildfire risk, and archival precarity that threatens ...

Several giant tree trunks next to each other with a person in a red jacket facing the trunks and looking at them.

Plant Blindness and “Seeing” Vegetal Timescales

Katherine Cheung examines the concept of plant blindness and the ways in which humans can understand the differing timescales of ...

Featured image: Starry night. Photo courtesy of Kaitlin Moore.