Let us let the solstice spark respect for the wider structures in which we find ourselves, and inspire us to be more thoughtful about the structures we create to live our lives.
“Elysium”
CITATION:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1997. Part IV, Letter XI (pp. 386-401) of Julie, or the New Heloise. Tr. Philip Stewart and Jean Vaché. In Collected Writings of Rousseau (Volume 6). Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
Internet Archive, digitization of translation printed in London, 1784.
ABSTRACT:
Julie is an epistolary novel set in mid-eighteenth century Switzerland. The plot involves the relationship between St. Preux, a young man who is hired as a tutor to the title character. They become lovers, but he is Continue reading
Pondering a diorama to perceive the Anthropocene
“This sprawling epic is as lively as a natural history museum diorama.” (Stephanie Zacharek, review of “10,000 BC”)
Perceiving means to become conscious of, to realize, to understand, to grasp. Natural history museums strive to enable the public to perceive, commonly in re-creations of past worlds. Who hasn’t gazed over a diorama of the Carboniferous Period, for example, Continue reading
Perception, Power, Plasticity: On the Mind in the Anthropocene
What are we to make of the fact that humans are susceptible to conspiracy theories involving anthropogenic effects on the planet? Continue reading
The current climate
We are unable to run the post we had scheduled for today, and I think it is important to explain why. Continue reading
Sensing High Water in Paris
Paris, Pont Alexandre III, January 18, 1910
In 1910 Paris suffered its second largest flood since 1658. Today the city is inundated by a public memory of that event of just over a century ago. Continue reading
One geologist’s perception of the Anthropocene
Berlin, 2014. The Anthropocene Working Group (“AWG,” of which I am a member) was convening for the first time to deliberate the proposal to formalize a new geological time unit in Earth’s history. This was personal to me, because Continue reading
Neptune’s Treasure: Confronting the Anthropocene with the Ancient Aroma of Ambergris
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
Why Say “Weed” in the Anthropocene?
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
“Contrasting the effects of natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow on urban evolution in white clover (Trifolium repens)”
CITATION:
Marc T. J. Johnson, Cindy M. Prashad, Mélanie Lavoignat, Hargurdeep S. Saini. 2018. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 285, no. 1883, published on-line July 25, 2018: pp. 8-33.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Urbanization is a global phenomenon with profound effects on the ecology and evolution of organisms. We examined the relative roles of natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow in influencing the evolution of white clover (Trifolium repens), which thrives in urban and rural areas. Continue reading
There Goes the Neighborhood: Urban Coyotes in Pennsylvania and California
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
Flying Over Greenland
I try not to panic about the Anthropocene. Continue reading
Sensing High Water in Venice
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
Seeing Artful Traces in the Geologic Record
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
Video of “Coupled Urban Metabolism” panel discussion
On April 19, 2018, Stephanie Pincetl, of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, presented her ideas on coupled urban metabolism at a Continue reading
Video of “Cities and Our Future” panel discussion
Earlier this spring, Cindy Simon Rosenthal offered a series of three posts on the topic of “Cities and Our Future: Governance in the Anthropocene.” On March 6, 2018 (rescheduled
Continue reading
“A sociometabolic reading of the Anthropocene: Modes of subsistence, population size and human impact on Earth”
CITATION:
Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Fridolin Krausmann and Irene Pallua. 2014. The Anthropocene Review, vol. 1, no. 1: pp. 8-33.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
We search for a valid and quantifiable description of how and when humans acquired the ability to dominate major features of the Earth System. While common approaches seek to quantify Continue reading
