[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
In The Politics Aristotle addresses the questions that lie at the heart of political science. How should society be ordered to ensure the happiness of the individual? Which forms of government are best and how Continue reading
Photo: Nora Ligorano
[This is the continuation of the post from last week.]
The Plain of Catania, atop which the city of Catania sits, is land reclaimed from the Ionian Sea by Etna’s lava and other subterranean volcanic uplift. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who traveled across it while writing the letters and notes that became his Italian Journey, refers quite accurately on May 1, 1787 to Continue reading
In Homer’s Odyssey (9.443), Polyphemus cries out “Nohbdy, Nohbdy’s tricked me, Nohbdy’s ruined me” after Odysseus, his captive and prospective meal, blinds him and eventually flees from his lair. Continue reading
Coral bleaching of Lizard Island. Photo credit: Trond Amundsen
If you have ever been lucky enough to see a tropical reef, you will know what I mean: these are places of Continue reading
I’d like to share two recent items from the news that make a sobering pairing.
The first is an opinion piece in the New York Times by psychologist Martin Seligman and Times science writer John Tierny summarizing a new theory about human beings that emphasizes our orientation toward the future. Continue reading
We welcome Ellie Irons, an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY, as a guest on the blog . . . click for her own website, or see her bio under the “Who we are” tab.
resistance (Biology): Ability (of an organism, tissue, or cell) to withstand a destructive agent or condition such as a chemical compound, a disease agent, or an environmental stressor. (American Heritage® Medical Dictionary) Continue reading
Stratigraphy is the science of rock strata; in geological terms, this translates to the science of time. But what IS time? Difficult to define, for certain, but most of us can agree that it marks the passage of events. We experience the passage of Continue reading
My previous post was a provocation on refusal. How, I asked, might the Anthr*pocene concept naturalize and even magnify the violent, dispossessionary forces it purports to describe? And how might refusing this concept relate to Continue reading
