Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talks

Christian Long, media studies scholar at University of Queensland (Australia), discussed his book  Infrastructure in Dystopian and Post-apocalyptic Film, 1968–2021  (University of Chicago Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 31 March 2025, at the special start time of 11am Central European time (7pm AEST in Queensland). Dystopian and post-ap...

Sasha Gora, cultural historian and Project Director of “Off the Menu” at University of Augsburg (Germany), discussed her book  Culinary Claims: Indigenous Restaurant Politics in Canada  (University of Toronto Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 24 March 2025. Culinary Claims  explores the complex relationships between wild plants and introduced...

Gina Caison, Associate Professor of Southern Literature at Georgia State University (USA), presented  Erosion: American Environments and the Anxiety of Disappearance  (Duke University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 17 March 2025. In  Erosion , Gina Caison traces how American authors and photographers have grappled with soil erosion as a mat...

Kylie Crane, Professor of British and American Cultural Studies at University of Rostock (Germany), will discuss her book  Concrete and Plastic: Thinking Through Materiality  (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 3 March 2025. Plastic and concrete are two of the most ubiquitous materials of the modern age. This open access book traces in...

Anne Berg, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), will discuss her book  Empire of Rags and Bones: Waste and War in Nazi Germany  (Oxford University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 17 February 2025. Paper, bottles, metal scrap, kitchen garbage, rubber, hair, fat, rags, and bones—the Nazi empire demanded its popula...

Ángeles Picone, Assistant Professor of History at Boston College (USA), discussed her book  Landscaping Patagonia: Spatial History and Nation-Making in Chile and Argentina  (University of North Carolina Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 10 February 2025. In late nineteenth-century Latin America, governments used new scientific, technological, and g...

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, Research Scholar at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany), discused his book  Sea Level: A History  (University of Chicago Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 27 January 2025. Wilko is our first “second book appearance” on the book talk series (which also shows how long we’ve been doing these talks!). News reports warn o...

Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, curator and Research Fellow in Art and Design at University of New South Wales (Australia), kicked off a new year of the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talks with a discussion of The Hydrocene: Eco-Aesthetics in the Age of Water (Routledge, 2024) on Monday, 20 January 2025. This book challenges conventional notions of the Anthropocene and champions the Hydrocene...

Lisa Yin Han, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Pitzer College (USA), discussed her book  Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor  (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) on the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 16 December 2024. Green energy technologies such as windmills, solar panels, and electric vehicles may soon depend on mater...

Jamie Jones, Assistant professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), discussed her book  Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling  (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 9 December 2024. Through the mid-nineteenth century, the US whaling industry helped drive industri...

Elena Kochetkova, Associate Professor in Modern European Economic History at University of Bergen, Norway, joined the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series to discuss her book  The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology  (The MIT Press, 2024) on Monday, 2 December 2024. In  The Green Power of Socialism,  Elena Kochetk...

Joseph Seeley, Assistant Professor of History, University of Virginia (USA), discussed his book  Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan’s Empire in Korea and Manchuria  (Cornell University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmetnal humanities book talk series on Monday, 25 November 2024. Border of Water and Ice  explores the significance of the Yalu River as a strategic border be...

Rachel Gross, assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver (USA), discussed her book  Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America  (Yale University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talks series on Monday, 18 November 2024. No escape to nature is complete without a trip to an outdoor recreational store or a browse throug...

Sandra Swart, Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, discussed her book  The Lion’s Historian: Africa’s Animal Past  (Jacana Media, 2023) in the Greenhouse book talk series on Monday, 11 November 2024. The animals in this landmark book – elephants, hippos, okapi, lions, jackals, cows, sheep, horses, white ants, quagga, Nazi cattle, police dogs an...

Judith Rauscher, assistant professor ( Juniorprofessorin ) of American Literature and Culture at the University of Cologne, discussed her book  Ecopoetic Place-Making: Nature and Mobility in Contemporary American Poetry  (Transcript, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk on Monday, 28 October 2024. American ecopoetries of migration explore the conflicted relationships of mobil...

Sarah Dimick, assistant professor of English at Northwestern University (USA), discussed her book  Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures  (Columbia University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 21 October 2024. As climate change alters seasons around the globe, literature registers and responds to shifting environmental time. A writer a...

Sonja Pieck, Professor of Environmental Studies at Bates College (USA), discussed her book  Mnemonic Ecologies: Memory and Nature Conservation along the Former Iron Curtain  (The MIT Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 30 September 2024. The first book-length scholarly treatment of Germany’s largest conservation project, the Green Belt,  Mnemoni...

Jamie Wang, Research Assistant Professor at the Education University of Hong Kong, presented her book  Reimagining the More-Than-Human City: Stories from Singapore  (The MIT Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 23 September 2024.. As climate change accelerates and urbanization intensifies, our need for more sustainable and livable cities has never bee...

Michael Lobel, Professor of Art History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY (USA), discussed his new book  Van Gogh and the End of Nature  (Yale University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talks on Monday, 16 September 2024. Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is most often portrayed as the consummate painter of nature whose work gained its strength from his direct...

John MacNeill Miller, Associate Professor of English at Allegheny College (USA), presented his book  The Ecological Plot: How Stories Gave Rise to a Science  (University of Virginia Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 9 September 2024. The Ecological Plot  traces the roots of this most mainstream branch of science back to an unexpected source: n...

Elsa Devienne, Assistant Professor of Humanities at Northumbria University (UK), discussed her book  Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles  (Oxford University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 2 September 2024. The Los Angeles shoreline is one of the most iconic natural landscapes in the United States, if not the worl...

Dan Vandersommers, Assistant Professor of History at University of Dayton, USA, discussed his book  Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo: Stories from the Animal Archive  (University Press of Kansas, 2023) on the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 26 August 2024. Founded amid the urban commotion of Washington, DC, before the dawn of the twentieth century, the Natio...

Kathleen (Kate) Murphy, Associate Dean for Student Success and Professor of History at California Polytechnic State University (USA), discussed her book  Captivity’s Collections: Science, Natural History, and the British Transatlantic Slave Trade  (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talks on Monday, 10 June 2024. Cashews from Africa’s Gold Coa...

Ellen F. Arnold, Senior Lecturer at Ohio State University (USA), discussed her book  Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, c.300-1100  (Cambridge University Press, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 3 June 2024. Fishermen, monks, saints, and dragons met in medieval riverscapes; their interactions reveal a rich and complex world....

Ruth Morgan, Associate Professor at the Australian National University, discussed her book  Climate Change and International History: Negotiating Science, Global Change, and Environmental Justice  (Bloomsbury, 2024) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 27 May 2024. Exploring how climate change has configured the international arena since the 1950s, this book revea...