Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talks

Liz Miller, professor of English at University California, Davis (USA), presented her book  Extraction Ecologies and the Literature of the Long Exhaustion  (Princeton University Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 7 February 2022. The 1830s to the 1930s saw the rise of large-scale industrial mining in the British imperial world. Elizabeth Carolyn Mil...

Michelle Nijhuis, project editor at the  Atlantic  and award-winning journalist, discussed her book  Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction  (W. W. Norton, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 31 January 2022. In the late nineteenth century, humans came at long last to a devastating realization: their rapidly industrializing and globalizin...

Alexander Etkind, Professor of History of Russia-Europe Relations at the European University Institute (Italy), presented his book  Nature’s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources  (Wiley, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 24 January 2022. This bold and wide-ranging book views the history of humankind through the prism of natural resources – how we...

Chris Pearson, Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century History at University of Liverpool (UK), discussed his book   Dogopolis: How Dogs and Humans Made Modern New York, London, and Paris   (University of Chicago Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 17 January 2022. Stroll through any American or European city today and you probably won’t get far before...

Gregg Mitman, Vilas Research and William Coleman Professor of History, Medical History, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (USA), discussed his book  Empire of Rubber: Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia   (The New Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 10 January 2022. In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80...

Nancy Langston, Distinguished Professor of Environmental History at Michigan Technological University (USA), presented her book Climate Ghosts: Migratory Species in the Anthropocene (Brandeis University Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 13 December 2021. Environmental historian Nancy Langston explores three “ghost species” in the Great Lakes waters...

Raf de Bont, chair of History of Science and the Environment at Maastrict University, the Netherlands, talked about his book Nature’s Diplomats: Science, Internationalism, and Preservation, 1920-1960 (University of Pittsburg Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 6 December 2021. Nature’s Diplomats  explores the development of science-based and int...

Charlie Hailey, Professor and Distinguished Teaching Scholar in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida, presented his book  The Porch: Meditations on the Edge of Nature  (University of Chicago Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 29 November 2021. Come with us for a moment out onto the porch. Just like that, we’ve entered another worl...

Samantha Walton, Reader in Modern Literature at Bath Spa University, presented her book  Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure  (Bloomsbury, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 22 November 2021. Everybody is talking about the healing properties of nature. Hospitals are being retrofitted with gardens, and forests reimagined as wellbeing centre...

Jessica Hurley, Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University, discussed her book  Infrastructures of Apocalypse: American Literature and the Nuclear Complex  (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 15 November 2021. Since 1945, America has spent more resources on nuclear technology than any other national project. Al...

Candace Fujikane, Professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i, presented her book  Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai’i  (Duke University Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 8 November 2021. In  Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future , Candace Fujikane contends that the prac...

Max Liboiron, Associate Professor of Geography at Memorial University, Canada, joined the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 1 November 2021 to discuss  Pollution is Colonialism  (Duke University Press, 2021). In  Pollution Is Colonialism  Max Liboiron presents a framework for understanding scientific research methods as practices that can align wit...

Vincent Ialenti, Research Fellow at The Berggruen Institute and University of Southern California, USA, discussed his book  Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now   (MIT Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 25 October 2021. We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own ac...

Heather Houser, associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, discussed her book  Infowhelm: Environmental Art and Literature in an Age of Data  (Columbia University Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 18 October 2021. How do artists and writers engage with environmental knowledge in the face of overwhelming information ab...

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, senior research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, presented his book  A Monastery for the Ibex: Conservation, State, and Conflict on the Gran Paradiso, 1919-1949  (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse series on Monday, 4 October 2021. Gran Paradiso National Park is Italy’s oldest, and was instrumental in preventi...

Nayanika Mathur, associate professor in anthropology at University of Oxford, presented  Crooked Cats. Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene  (University of Chicago Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on 27 September 2021. How do humans live near big cats—tigers, leopards, and lions—that may or may not be predatory? Though they are popularly known as “man eate...

Kirsten Greer, Associate Professor in the Departments of Geography and History at Nipissing University (Canada) and the Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Histories and Geographies, joined the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series to discuss her book  Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire  (University of North Caro...

Robert Geal, Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Wolverhampton (UK), discussed his book  Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis: Surviving the Environmental Apocalypse in Cinema  (Routledge 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 13 September 2021. This book applies ecolinguistics and psychoanalysis to explore how films fic...

Anna Burton, teaching fellow at University of Liverpool (UK), joined the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series to discuss her book  Trees in Nineteenth-Century English Fiction: The Silvicultural Novel  (Routledge, 2021) on Monday, 6 September 2021. Trees in Nineteenth-Century English Fiction: The Silvicultural Novel  identifies the picturesque thinker William Gilpin a...

Finis Dunaway, professor of history at Trent University (Canada), presented his book  Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice  (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 30 August 2021. Tucked away in the northeastern corner of Alaska is one of the most...

Joanna Page, Reader in Latin American Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Cambridge, presented her book  Decolonizing Science in Latin American Art  (UCL Press, 2021) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series on Monday, 23 August 2021. Projects that bring the ‘hard’ sciences into art are increasingly being exhibited in galleries and museums across the wor...

Emily O’Gorman, senior lecturer at Macquarie University (Australia) kicked off our fall 2021 edition of the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series with a discussion of her new book  Wetlands in a Dry Land: More-than-Human Histories of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin  (University of Washington Press, 2021) on Monday 16 August 2021. In the name of agriculture, urban growth,...

Anna Barcz, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, presented her book  Environmental Cultures in Soviet East Europe: Literature, History and Memory  (Bloomsbury, 2020) on Monday, 14 June 2021, in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talk series. For more than 40 years Eastern European culture came under the sway of Soviet rule...

Christine Keiner, Professor of STS and History at Rochester Institute of Technology, presented her book  Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal  (University of Georgia Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book talks series on Monday, 7 June 2021. The Atlantic-Pacific Central American sea-level canal is generally regarded as a spectacular failure....

Joseph Pugliese, Professor in the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University (Australia), discussed his book  Biopolitics of the More-than-Human: Forensic Ecologies of Violence  (Duke University Press, 2020) in the Greenhouse environmental humanities book series on Monday, 31 May 2021. In  Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human  Pugliese...