Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talks

Robert (Bob) McKay, Professor of Contemporary Literature at University of Sheffield (UK), discussed his book  Anthropofugal Fictions: Literature, Species Politics and Flight from Humanity  (Edinburgh University Press, 2026) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 11 May 2026. This book traces a radical politics of species across the work of four significant Anglophon...

Mary Mendoza, assistant professor of history at Penn State University (USA), discussed her book  Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border  (University of North Carolina Press, 2026) in the Greeenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 4 May 2026. When most people picture the US-Mexico border, they think of walls, fences, concrete, a...

John Scanlan, Research Fellow in Place Development & Promotion at University of Lancashire (UK), discussed his book  The Idea of Waste: On the Limits of Human Life  (Reaktion Books, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 27 April 2026. The Idea of Waste  starts with the premise that waste is inevitable in human society. It explores how we ha...

Michelle Henning, Professor in Photography and Media at the University of Liverpool (UK), discussed her book  A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire  (University of Chicago Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 13 April 2026. Dependent on the extractive practices of fossil-fueled industrial capitalism, chemical photography...

Brycchan Carey, Professor of Literature, Culture, and History at Northumbria University (UK), discussed his book The Unnatural Trade: Slavery, Abolition, and Environmental Writing, 1650-1807 (Yale University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 23 March 2025 . How did late eighteenth-century British abolitionists come to view the slave trade and...

Josephine Taylor, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin (Ireland), discussed her book The Nonhuman Narratives of Energy: Multispecies Encounters in Extraction Zones (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 16 March 2026. This book brings the emerging field of petrocultures and energy humanities discourse into conversation...

Kip Hutchins, visiting assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Oberlin College (USA), discussed his book  A Song for the Horses: Musical Heritage for More-than-Human Futures in Mongolia   (University of Arizona Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 16 February 2026. As permafrost in Siberia continues to melt and the steppe in...

Christopher Jones, associate professor of history at Arizona State University (USA), discussed his book  The Invention of Infinite Growth: How Economists Came to Believe a Dangerous Delusion  (University of Chicago Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 2 February 2026. Most economists believe that growth is the surest path to better lives. Th...

Katja Bruisch, Ussher Assistant Professor in Modern Environmental History at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), discussed her book  Burning Swamps: Peat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia’s Fossil Economy  (Cambridge University Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 26 January 2026. This groundbreaking environmental history recounts the story...

In our first episode of Season 7, Isabelle Gapp, Interdisciplinary Fellow in the Department of Art History and Co-Director of The Centre for the North at University of Aberdeen (UK), discussed her book A Circumpolar Landscape: Art and Environment in Scandinavia and North America, 1890-1930 (Lund Humphries, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 19 January 2026...

Nathan K. Hensley, Professor of English at Georgetown University (USA), discussed his book  Action Without Hope: Victorian Literature After Climate Collapse  (University of Chicago Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 8 December 2025. What does it feel like to live helplessly in a world that is coming undone? Nathan Hensley turns to Victorian literatu...

Joanna Allan, Associate Professor in global development at Northumbria University, UK, discussed her book  Saharan Winds: Energy Systems and Aeolian Imaginaries in Western Sahara  (West Virginia University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 1 December 2025. As climate crisis ensues, a transition away from fossil fuels becomes urgent. Howev...

Dominic Hinde, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow, discussed his book  Drifting North: Finding a sustainable future in Scotland’s past  (Manchester University Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 17 November 2025. Past and future collide in this engaging journey through climate change, fossil capitalism and the struggle for a...

Dolly Jørgensen, Professor of History at University of Stavanger (Norway) and co-host of the Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talks, presented her own book Ghosts Behind Glass: Encountering Extinction in Museums (University of Chicago Press, 2025) in conversation with co-host Finn Arne Jørgensen and special co-host Ellen Arnold on Monday, 10 November 2025. While it’s no longer possible to...

Micah Muscolino, professor and Paul G. Pickowicz Endowed Chair in Modern Chinese History at the University of California San Diego (USA), discussed his book  Remaking the Earth, Exhausting the People: The Burden of Conservation in Modern China  (University of Washington Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 27 October 2025. From the 1940s to the 1960s,...

Marianna Dudley, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Humanties at University of Bristol (UK), discussed her book  Electric Wind: An Energy History of Modern Britain  (Manchester University Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 20 October 2025. There are turbines on the horizon. The blades whirl with metronomic rhythm. With each rotation, wind is...

Roy Scranton, Associate Professor and Director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative (EHUM) at University of Notre Dame (USA), discussed his book  Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress  (Stanford University Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 6 October 2025. Extreme heat, fires, floods, and storms are transforming our plan...

Brad Bolman, Assistant Professor of History at Tulane University (USA), discussed his book  Lab Dog: What Global Science Owes American Beagles  (University of Chicago Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 29 September 2025. Intrepid, docile, and cloaked in coats of white, black, and tan, beagles were one of the most popular breeds in the Unit...

Jules Skotnes-Brown, Research Fellow at the University of St. Andrews (UK), discussed his book  Segregated Species: Pests, Knowledge, and Boundaries in South Africa, 1910–1948  (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 15 September 2025. Throughout the twentieth century, rural South Africa was dominated by systems of rac...

Tina Adcock, assistant professor of history at Simon Fraser University (Canada), discussed her book  A Cold Colonialism: Modern Exploration and the Canadian North  (University of British Columbia Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 8 September 2025. Exploration has long been pivotal to southern engagements with northern Canada, but it is mo...

Richard Fallon, KE Fellow at University of Nottingham and Postdoctoral Researcher in Collections and Culture at the Natural History Museum (UK), discussed his book  Contesting Earth’s History in Transatlantic Literary Culture, 1860-1935: Believers and Visionaries on the Borderlines of Geology and Palaeontology  (Oxford University Press, 2025) in the Gre...

Rebecca K. Wright, Assistant Professor in History at Northumbria University (UK), discussed her book  Moral Energy in America: From the Progressive Era to the Atomic Bomb  (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 12 May 2025. In  Moral Energy in America , Rebecca K. Wright offers an illuminating exploration of how...

John Kinder, director of American Studies and professor of history at Oklahoma State University (USA), discussed his book  World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age  (University of Chicago Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 5 May 2025. As Europe lurched into war in 1939, zookeepers started killing...

Pollyanna Rhee, assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (USA), discussed her book Natural Attachments: The Domestication of American Environmentalism, 1920–1970 (University of Chicago Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 28 April 2025. A massive oil spill in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, Ca...

Josh Nygren, Associate Professor of history at the University of Central Missouri (USA), discussed his book  The State of Conservation: Rural America and the Conservation-Industrial Complex since 1920  (University of North Carolina Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 7 April 2025. In the twentieth century, natural resource conservation emer...