Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talks

Tore Størvold, Associate Professor of Music at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, discussed his book  Dissonant Landscapes: Music, Nature, and the Performance of Iceland  (Wesleyan University Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 4 September 2023. During the past three decades, Iceland has attained a strong presence in the world throug...

Writer Bethany Brookshire discussed her book  Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains  (HarperCollins, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 28 August 2023 . A squirrel in the garden. A rat in the wall. A pigeon on the street. Humans have spent so much of our history drawing a hard line between human spaces and wild places. When animals pop up where we don’t...

Hi′ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies at Yale University (USA), discussed  Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment  (Duke University Press, 2022) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 19 June 2023. Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and...

Christina Gerhardt, Associate Professor at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and Senior Fellow at the University of California Berkeley (USA), discussed  Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean  (University of California Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 12 June 2023. Atlases are being redrawn as islands are disappearing. What does an is...

Charlotte Wrigley, postdoctoral fellow at the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities, University of Stavanger (Norway), presented her book  Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood: Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian Arctic  (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 5 June 2023. Climate scientists point to permafrost as a “ticking tim...

Katrin Kleemann, postdoctoral researcher at the German Maritime Museum – Leibniz Institute for Maritime History (Germany), launched her book  A Mist Connection: An Environmental History of the Laki Eruption of 1783 and Its Legacy  (De Gruyter, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 22 May 2023. In the summer of 1783, an unusual dry fog descended upon large par...

Matthew Eisler, Lecturer in History at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow (UK), discussed his book  Age of Auto Electric: Environment, Energy, and the Quest for the Sustainable Car  (MIT Press, 2022) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 15 May 2023. Electric cars were once as numerous as internal combustion engine cars before all but vanishing from American ro...

Amy Kohout, associate professor of history at Colorado College (USA), discussed her book  Taking the Field: Soldiers, Nature, and Empire on American Frontiers  (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 8 May 2023. In the late nineteenth century, at a time when Americans were becoming more removed from nature than ever before, U.S. s...

Caroline Grego, Assistant Professor of History at Queen’s University of Charlotte (USA), presented her book  Hurricane Jim Crow: How the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 Shaped the Lowcountry South  (University of North Carolina Press, 2022) on Monday, 24 April 2023 in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series. On an August night in 1893, the deadliest hurricane in South Carolina hist...

Killian Quigley, Research Fellow at Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, discussed his book  Reading Underwater Wreckage: An Encrusting Ocean  (Bloomsbury, 2023) on Monday, 17 April 2023 in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series. Presenting a novel and needed theoretical model for interpreting shipwrecks and other drowned fragments-the hi...

Historian Neil Oatsvall discussed his book  Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, the Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960  (University of Alabama Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental book talk series on Monday, 27 March 2023. In  Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, the Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960 , Neil S. Oatsvall examines how top officials in the Tr...

Christina Dunbar-Hester, associate professor at the University of Southern California (USA), discussed  Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond  (University of Chicago Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk on Monday, 20 March 2023. Can the stories of bananas, whales, sea birds, and otters teach us to reconsider the seapo...

Ezra Rashkow, Associate Professor of History at Montclair State University (USA), discussed his book  The Nature of Endangerment in India: Tigers, ‘Tribes’, Extermination & Conservation, 1818-2020  (Oxford University Press, 2022) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 13 March 2023. Perhaps no category of people on earth has been perceived as more endangered, no...

Abigail Agresta, Assistant Professor of History at George Washington University (USA), presented her book  The Keys to Bread and Wine: Faith, Nature, and Infrastructure in Late Medieval Valencia  (Cornell University Press, 2022) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 6 March 2023. How did medieval people think about the environments in which they lived? In a wo...

Simone Ferracina, founding director of Exaptive Design Office (EDO) and Lecturer in Architectural Design/Detail at University of Edinburgh (UK), discussed his book  Ecologies of Inception: Design Potentials on a Warming Planet  (Routledge, 2022) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 20 February 2023. Responding to increasing levels of planetary pollution, waste gen...

Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa, Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Seattle University (USA), launched his book  The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life  (University of California Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 13 February 2023. In  The Celluloid Specimen , Benjamín Schultz‑Figueroa examines rarely seen behaviorist film...

Samantha Muka, assistant professor of science, technology, and society in the College of Arts and Letters at Stevens Institute of Technology (USA), discussed Oceans under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea (University of Chicago Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 6 February 2023. Atlantic coral is rapidly disappearing in the wild. To save...

Faizah Zakaria, Assistant professor of history at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), discussed her book The Camphor Tree and the Elephant: Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia (University of Washington Press, 2023) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 30 January 2023. What is the role of religion in shaping interactions and relation...

Christiaan De Beukelaer, Senior Lecturer in Culture & Policy in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne (Australia), joined the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk to discuss  Trade Winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping  (University of Manchester Press, 2023) on Monday, 23 January 2023. In 2020, Christiaan De Beukelaer spent 150 days cove...

Matthew Henry, assistant instructional professor at University of Wyoming (USA), launched his book  Hydronarratives: Water, Environmental Justice, and a Just Transition  (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) with the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk on Monday, 16 January 2023. The story of water in the United States is one of ecosystemic disruption and social injustice. From...

Lisa Bloom, Scholar-in-Residence at the Beatrice Bain Research Group in the Department of Gender and Women’s studies, University of California, Berkeley (USA), discussed her book  Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics: Artists Reimagine the Arctic and Antarctic  (Duke University Press, 2022) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 12 December 2022. In Climate C...

Charne Lavery, Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria (South Africa), presented her book  Writing Ocean Worlds: Indian Ocean Fiction in English  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) in our Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 5 December 2022. This book explores the Indian Ocean world as it is produced by colonial and postcolonial fiction in English. It...

Min Hyoung Song, Professor of English at Boston College (USA), discussed his book  Climate Lyricism  (Duke University Press, 2022) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 28 November 2022. In  Climate Lyricism  Min Hyoung Song articulates a climate change-centered reading practice that foregrounds how climate is present in most literature. Song shows how li...

For our 100th Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk, writer Lydia Pyne discussed her book  Endlings: Fables for the Anthropocene  (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) with us on Monday, 21 November 2022. An endling is the last known individual of a species; when that individual dies, the species becomes extinct. These “last individuals” are poignant characters in the stories that humans t...

Eric Hirsch, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Franklin & Marshall College (USA) discussed his book  Acts of Growth: Development and the Politics of Abundance in Peru  (Stanford University Press, 2022) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 14 November 2022. Over the last decade, Peru has experienced a spectacular mining boom and astronomical econo...