blog

Animal Writes: Historiography, Disciplinarity, and the Animal Trace

Animal Writes: Historiography, Disciplinarity, and the Animal Trace, in Making Animal Meaning, ed. Linda Kalof and Georgina Montgomery (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011): 3-16. (pdf)

new work in animal studies

The rhetoric journal JAC has just published a special issue on animals that includes my review (pdf) of Animal Encounters (2009), a volume of essays edited by Tom Tyler and Manuela Rossini. The number of collections along these lines has grown explosively in recent years, but for anyone interested in the literary and cultural-studies side of animal studies, both the JAC issue and Animal Encounters merit a close read. Unfortunately the JAC issue is not yet available online; hopefully it will be soon.

Wired Wilderness: Technologies of Tracking and the Making of Modern Wildlife

Wired Wilderness: Technologies of Tracking and the Making of Modern Wildlife (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). Continue reading “Wired Wilderness: Technologies of Tracking and the Making of Modern Wildlife”

‘taking the earth’s pulse’

The program committee for the next annual meeting of the American Society for Environmental History (12-17 April 2011, Phoenix, Arizona) has accepted a panel proposal that I helped put together with Gina Rumore (the organizer),  James Collins, and Erik Conway. The panel is titled “Taking the Earth’s Pulse: Scientific Networks and the Challenges of Collecting Environmental Data.” We’re hoping it will provoke vigorous discussion at the intersection of environmental history and the history of science and that it will provide some new perspectives on recent efforts to build continent- and globe-spanning networks of ecological surveillance.

conservation biology and the regulatory archive

As of 1 September 2010, I’m a research scholar in Department II of the Max Planck Institute for the the History of Science, where I’m participating in a project on the Sciences of the Archive. The project aims to historicize “data” —  a concept which, as my colleagues at the MPIWG write, has typically been considered “too basic to merit a history.” Continue reading “conservation biology and the regulatory archive”

‘a difficult time with the permit process’

The Journal of the History of Biology is publishing a special issue on environmental history under the guest editorship of Libby Robin and Jane Carruthers. It’s not yet in print, but all of the articles are now available online, including my “A Difficult Time with the Permit Process.” Continue reading “‘a difficult time with the permit process’”

animal history

I’ve renamed my list of “animal studies core readings”  an “animal history” list to more accurately reflect its (and my) real focus. Many works that are not strictly historical in methodology or content are still included, of course. For better coverage of sociology, philosophy, literary studies, etc., see the very extensive animal studies bibliography assembled by Linda Kalof and her colleagues at Michigan State University.