Posts that reflect on issues related to habitation in the Anthropocene, without presenting a particular reading.
Ambergris found in New Zealand. Image from Ambergis NZ
I find examining human history more comforting than considering the ever-encroaching future promised (or threatened?) by talk of the Anthropocene. This preference informs my work as an artist: Continue reading
White clover growing in the lawn outside the New York Hall of Science, where the author and Environmental Performance Agency collaborators held the workshop “Plant Talk, Human Talk: An EPA Training for the Beginning of the World” (image by the Environmental Performance Agency)
In my post last week, I used a recent study on the urban evolution of white clover and its coverage in the popular press to start thinking about how traits described as “weedy” relate to Continue reading
Coyote in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
This post was co-authored by Christian Hunold, Drexel University
and Teresa Lloro-Bidart, Cal Poly Pomona
Coyotes have incorporated themselves into nearly every major city in North America. Coyotes’ ability to thrive in cities testifies not only to the Anthropocene’s blurring of human-wildlife boundaries; it also undermines the idea that Continue reading
I try not to panic about the Anthropocene. Continue reading
Flood warning siren in Venice (from Sounds Like Noise)
Visiting Venice this summer suggested some intellectual bridges between cities (see our previous series on the Urban Anthropocene), and our new theme (Perceiving the Anthropocene). How do cities help us perceive the Anthropocene— Continue reading
This is the first in a series of posts on Perceiving the Anthropocene.
After escaping Polyphemus’s cave, Odysseus, ignoring protests from his men, shouts back in anger at the giant:
Cyclops! If any mortal asks you how
your eye was mutilated and made blind,
say that Odysseus, the city-sacker,
Laertes’ son, who lives in Ithaca,
Destroyed your sight.— Homer, The Odyssey, IX.502-506, Emily Wilson, trans.
Odysseus’s announcement functions like a signature Continue reading
THIS POST IS PART OF OUR SERIES ON URBAN METABOLISM.
It continues Part 1’s discussion of two readings: “Democracies with a future: Degrowth and the democratic tradition,” by Marco Deriu, and “De-growth: Do you realise what it means?” by Ted Trainer
Co-authored with Robert Bailey
The Party for Degrowth, rally in Lyon, 2007. © Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0.
This is the third in Dr. Rosenthal’s three-part series on “Cities and Our Future: Governance in the Anthropocene.” Here are links to the first, and second posts. She will present her ideas at a panel discussion on the OU campus on March 6, 2018; here is the poster for the event.
In the late 19th century, a movement for municipal reform gained prominence across the nation, led by the emergence of Continue reading
This is the second in Dr. Rosenthal’s three-part series on “Cities and Our Future: Governance in the Anthropocene.” Click for the first post.
Cities have variously been characterized as “limited” (Peterson 1981), “dependent” (Kantor 1995), and “ungovernable” (Ferman 1985.) Urban scholar Paul Peterson in his seminal work, City Limits, concluded that cities are seriously limited by Continue reading
This is the first in Dr. Rosenthal’s three-part series on “Cities and Our Future: Governance in the Anthropocene.”
When President Trump proclaimed that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, he claimed to represent the “citizens of Pittsburgh not Paris.” Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto was quick to respond, tweeting Continue reading
Wishing you all the best for the holiday season!
We will be back on January 17, 2018 to continue our exploration of the urban Anthropocene.
Two recent special sections of the journal The Anthropocene Review offer a set of interdisciplinary reflections on the “technosphere.”[1] In this post, I will discuss several of the contributions in order to ask Continue reading
The cold in Yakutsk, Russia. Courtesy of http://www.snowaddiction.org
In the middle of winter in Yakutsk, Russia, the average temperature is -34 °C–so cold that the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit is negligible. Overnight dips to -42 °C are common. For the 270,000 people who live there, time outside is to be avoided—eyeglasses freeze to your face, eyelashes freeze, your nose hairs freeze. October to April is spent scurrying around from house to house and spending Continue reading
[This is the continuation of the post from last week.]
To speak of an “Anthropocene for pathogens” is to imagine the ways that human transformation of the environment has shaped the ecology and evolution of infectious microbes. In other words, it is to imagine Continue reading
The smallpox virus
We welcome our colleague Kyle Harper to the blog; his bio is on the OU contributors page. His book, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, is now available from Princeton University Press. Continue reading
Galata bridge in Istanbul, bridging east and west, old and new. By Moyan Brenn [CC BY 2.0)]
As we get started with our series on the urban Anthropocene, I’d like to approach the topic as a biologist, and think of cities as places filled with various kinds of life.
Continue reading
Inhabiting the Anthropocene 
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