New Books in Environmental Studies
In-depth interviews with authors of some of the most exciting recent environmental scholarship. Listen to my latest conversations below or browse all my episodes here. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Gaylord Nelson & Earth Day: The Making of the Modern Environmental Movement
nelsonearthday.net
A online exhibit and digital archive dedicated to exploring the career of Senator Gaylord Nelson and showcasing his grassroots, justice-oriented vision for a "national teach-in" on the environment, which became the first Earth Day. Explore this collaboration between the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Nelson Institute for Environmental studies here.
Race and Environment in U.S. History
History 227: Explorations in the history of race and ethnicity
An intensive three-week summer course taught in 2018 and 2019 in the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of History. Learn more and explore the syllabus here.
The Edge Effects podcast
Conversations with pathbreaking thinkers inside the academy and beyond about cultural and environmental change across the full sweep of human history. Subscribe in Apple Podcasts and Google Play. Enjoy recent episodes I have co-produced below.
The Water Isn't Fine: A Conversation with Anna Clark
Muslims Stand Up for Environmental Justice: A Conversation with Huda Alkaff
Rachel Carson Joins the Literary Canon: A Conversation with Sandra Steingraber
Food Justice Requires Land Justice: A Conversation with Savi Horne
Woke Environmentalism
Edge Effects – July 31, 2018
This is not a story of poor and racialized Americans having a belated environmental awakening. It is instead the tale of them beating down the doors of institutions and movements that have overlooked them… [read more]
The Monuments We Never Built
Edge Effects — August 22, 2017
Today, in the wake of Charleston and Charlottesville, a small number of those pedestals stand empty. Many have recommended explanatory plaques be added to the monuments that remain. Others have called for new monuments, the public memorials to slavery and statues of people like Revels that would already be more than a century old had Jim Crow not robbed the quarries, had white northerners not retreated from the battle for the war’s legacy... [read more]
Freedom's Dystopia
Humanities NOW — April 4, 2013
The sickness and suffering that accompanied emancipation were not inevitable, even in this political context. There was sufficient epidemiological knowledge, laboring hands, and federal funds to prevent this stillbirth of freedom for hundreds of thousands of former slaves... [read more]
A Confederate Shrine, Submerged
Edge Effects October 7, 2014
“It would be a shrine of the nation—if the South had won the war"... The premise carried the usual seduction of a pithy counterfactual. But it did not stand to reason... [read more]
Spitball Bearings: Baseball and the Unruly World
Edge Effects — October 13, 2015
Baseball has always been more field research than lab science. From its varied fields of play to their permeable boundaries, it invites dynamism, instability, and messiness. Here’s a starting lineup of moments in which the sport’s vulnerability to, and dependence on, the material world have become especially visible... [read more]
