Everyone seems to agree that Alejandro Inarritu’s most recent film is beautiful. The expansive shots allow the Western mountains to rise and recede. Scenes unfold in the midst of open forests yet the whole depth of field is in precise focus. The sky is full, so that even when it is no more than the uniform grey of impending snow it rises to carry the viewer outside of the cinema to the actual sky overhead—to the inescapable cold of deep winter. What is less agreed upon is the

Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s 2013 essay begins with a brief but incisive genealogy of posthumanist theory, a genealogy in which scholars like Aimé Césaire and Sylvia Wynter prefigure Michel Foucault. Jackson explains that it is Foucault’s “observation that ‘man’ is a historically contingent formation” which is most often understood as urging the humanities to critically reflect on the category of “man” at the center of humanism and to move toward posthumanism. However, Césaire,

Not liking dogs is un-human. Our longtime “besties,” besides being all cute and Lassie-like, strike me as an interesting example of our more favorable relationships with nonhuman animals. We often call “companion” species members of the family. Hell, there are people, at this moment, making a living off of haute couture nonhuman animal clothing and accessories. Yet, these nonhuman beings appear to occupy a curious position as second-class subjects. In other words, their subje

Scientific research into the myriad abilities of plants to recognize and respond to their environments calls into question the “common-sense” assumptions (for some cultures) that plants are passive, sedentary, and uncommunicative. At the same time, there are important differences between plants and other kinds of creatures, like animals. Revising people’s understanding of plants without inaccurately representing plants vis-à-vis animals can thus be a tricky task for science a

Can Western critical theory decenter anthropos, the human? The formulation of the “Anthropocene” as a geological era suggests that human impact upon the planet cannot be ignored. Yet the Anthropocene simultaneously and ironically calls attention to the anthropocentrism of some human cultures that have contributed to global environmental crises and injustices. This tension between the need to recognize and the need to depart from theories that center the human (or more properl

Many people mark the beginning of contemporary environmentalism with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. Carson depicts the effects of toxic chemicals, mainly pesticides, on birds, humans, and other animals. Her writing imaginatively and materially links human and non-human bodies—including humans and plants. Chapter 6 of Silent Spring begins with Carson’s recognition that “[t]he earth’s vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and

On Oct. 2, 2014, Ursula Heise [http://www.uheise.net/] spoke on “Biocities: Urban Futures and the Reinvention of Nature” to an attentive audience at UNL’s Sheldon Museum of Art. Heise, a professor of English and a faculty member of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment of the Sustainability, was the 17th invited guest of the Humanities on the Edge speaker series. Her lecture previewed ideas from her manuscript-in-progress, Where the Wild Things Used to Be: Narrative, Database,

The plants at the center of Ruth Ozeki’s 2003 novel All Over Creation are agricultural crops, in particular, the Russet Burbank potato. Ursula Heise notices how Ozeki repeatedly uses the potato as a metaphor for humans, and suggests this narrative equation demonstrates the dangers of conflating social and biological diversity. Heise’s larger point is that environmental literature and ecocriticism need a more nuanced engagement with theories of transnationalism and globalizati

This year I’m planning to head into the weeds, to think through some of the growing body of theoretical ideas and scholarship on plants. The phrase “in the weeds” suggests the experience of being overwhelmed with tasks or overtaken by details. In the weeds is off the clear path of knowledge or control. Whether or not such a location is seen as productive probably depends on what you define a weed as, and where, and why. Weeds are conventionally called plants out of place; in

A watershed is a geographic feature that divides water into different systems. A watershed also represents the tributaries and gathering ground for a central body of water. As graduate students at the University of Nebraska, we acknowledge the significance of watersheds to the agricultural industry as well as the ecology of the Great Plains region. However and perhaps most popularly, a watershed is known to be a crucial event or occurrence recognized as causing a turning poin