Archives
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No. 5 (2024)
The fifth issue of Springs is an odyssey from the cold depths of a northern German lake to the warm dunes of southern Portugal. Jessica Lee travels to the German village of Neuglobsow to uncover a region shaped by the intangible legends of ferocious red roosters as well as by the tangible impact of a nearby nuclear power plant. A new, re-enchanting vocabulary for the misunderstood kingdom of fungi, giving an organism “agency” through language, is, as Alison Pouliot contends, the first step toward a more mainstream recognition. When RCC Director Christof Mauch sits down with Martin Saxer, it is to discuss what makes the spatially unconfined practice of contemporary foraging different from the that of hunter–gatherers. Anthropologist Emmanuelle Roth and historian Gregg Mitman follow a local park ranger through the Nimba mountain range to investigate how the region’s complex history has altered relations among its living and nonliving occupants. Along the shoreline of a small beaver pond in Maine, writer and historian Beth LaDow regales us with a story of the quirky relationship between humans and beavers and gives us a glimpse into the everyday life of the wetlands they create. Joana Gaspar de Freitas reckons with her self-professed transitory muses: sand dunes. Among the shifting slopes of southern Portugal’s human-shaped shoreline, the product of a decades-long beach nourishment project, Joana’s personal history and her professional research collide.
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No. 4 (2023)
The fourth issue of Springs leads us across four continents, from the streets of downtown Los Angeles to the Ecuadorian Amazon, into the woodlands of southwest Nigeria, and along Ukraine’s Dnipro river. Frank Zelko yanks the root causes of tooth loss in industrial societies from the long history of dental ecology. Jens Kersten implores the democratic states of the Global North to transform their constitutional orders and embrace their responsibility for planetary health. As we digest the marvelous images of Amelia Fiske and Jonas Fischer’s “Crude Encounters,” we are asked to consider the ecological and psychological impacts of oil extraction. Brady Fauth sits down with Francesca Mezzenzana to discuss her research into children’s human–nonhuman relationships. Joseph Adedeji encourages us to experience the power of built heritage as a symbol of hope for a harmonious coexistence of society and the nonhuman world. Irus Braverman’s “Mother Drone, Mother Nature” holds under the microscope the ongoing convergences in technological innovation, nature conservation, and the Israeli military. Jenny Price pulls us through the looking glass, into the unique world of mockstitutions. The Dnipro river, a major focus of Soviet industrialization, is the subject of Paul Josephson’s “Rivers as Battlefields.” Serenella Iovino writes about Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees and uncovers the author’s unique political ecology.
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No. 3 (2023)
The third issue of Springs includes peer-reviewed essays on heat and hurricanes, an interview on plants in urban environments, and reflections on transactional thinking about the environment. Paula Ungar’s reflective essay considers Alexander von Humboldt’s observations and a more deeply rooted wisdom. Tom Princen’s “Weathered History: Galveston and Extreme Events” explores the effects of hurricanes and land subsidence on the region of Galveston, Texas. Nina Wormbs reports on reasoning in the face of climate change. In “Roots through Asphalt,” Sonja Dümpelmann and Pauline Kargruber discuss the multifaceted history of plants and trees in urban spaces. Steve Mentz takes the reader with him as he revisits the lake by the Rachel Carson Center’s Landhaus. Melanie Arndt’s “The Heat Is On!” explores turn of the twentieth-century technologies that created central heating, its societal impacts, and its limits. Helen Tiffin’s opinion essay makes the case for inhabitants of the Global North to limit human reproduction. In “The Slow Death of an Ethiopian Lake,” Hayal Desta demonstrates the effects of water-grabbing with a focus on the international flower industry. Paul Sutter establishes the term “Knowledge Anthropocene” to describe an intellectual enterprise that has changed our understanding of earth systems and our role within them.
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No. 2 (2022)
The second issue of Springs includes peer-reviewed essays on sharks and Monarchs, historical analyses, creative nonfiction, and a poem about an earthworm that reminds us to look more closely. Placing the “acrid orange blanket” within environmental history, Tom Griffiths offers insights about Australia in a warming world. In “Monarchs of the Great Plains,” Sara M. Gregg explores the “interwoven life cycles of milkweed and Monarch” butterflies. Sumana Roy reads her poem, “Earthworm,” which serves as a reminder of the wondrous power and fragility in the everyday. In “Chicago’s Temple of Steel,” J. R. McNeill traces iron ore from the Precambrian period through the steelworks of the industrial era. Miles Powell dives into sportfishing practices, literature, biology, and ecology in “Fishing for Sharks.” Jane Carruthers provides a historical overview of the challenges thwarting a transition to renewable energy in South Africa. “Ecological Civilization,” by Donald Worster describes a concept with roots in Western philosophy and Chinese traditions with relevance to our contemporary planetary consciousness. Elin Kelsey reflects on her encounters with the natural world from dusk to dawn in “Why I Sleep Outside.” Shen Hou looks across the Pacific and sees “an invisible bond” in “Cities by the Sea.”
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No. 1 (2022)
The inaugural issue of Springs begins with a glass bottle and a few leaves of grass. In “The World as a Wardian Case,” Kate Brown considers the connections between plants, biospheres, and the politics of breathing. Reflecting on lead-white pigment in art history, Antonia Alampi introduces how toxicity intersects with capitalism, imperialism, and race. On Lord Howe Island, Cameron Muir has a run-in with a nearly extinct species: the woodhen. Spotlighting “twenty-first century ecological politics,” Sophia Kalantzakos wonders: “Can Brussels and Beijing Get It Right?” In “An Otherworldly Species: Joshua Trees and the Conservation-Climate Dilemma” Thomas M. Lekan discusses what he considers a false choice between climate protection and conservation. In “Life at the Landhaus,” Samantha Walton describes how on walks with other fellows “thoughts strung out like threads across the paths” they traversed together. Sule Emmanuel Egya weaves together a personal love letter to trees with accounts of having witnessed extractive wood logging in Gombe, Nigeria. Franz-Josef Brüggemeier challenges coal’s reputation as dull in “Coal, War, and Peace in Twentieth Century Europe.” And María Valeria Berros and Rita Brara propose “A World Parliament of Rivers.”
