Focusing on the multifaceted relationship between humans and water, this textbook offers a comprehensive exploration of water-centric thinking through literary, cultural, historical, and theoretical lenses. It serves as an essential introduction for students, highlighting the significance of water in shaping human experiences and ecological understandings.
Takes the singular eco-catastrophic “Age of Man” and redefines this epoch We live in a new the Anthropocene. The Age of Man is defined in many ways, and most dramatically through climate change, mass extinction, and human marks in the geological record. Ideas of the Anthropocene spill out from the geophysical sciences into the humanities, social sciences, the arts, and mainstream debates—but it’s hard to know what the new coinage really means. Break Up the Anthropocene argues that this age should subvert imperial masculinity and industrial conquest by opening up the plural possibilities of Anthropocene debates of resilience, adaptation, and the struggle for environmental justice. Ideas FirstShort books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The ocean comprises the largest object on our planet. Retelling human history from an oceanic rather than terrestrial point of view unsettles our relationship with the natural environment. Our engagement with the world's oceans can be destructive, as with today's deluge of plastic trash and acidification, but the mismatch between small bodies and vast seas also emphasizes the frailty and resilience of human experience. From ancient stories of shipwrecked sailors to the containerized future of 21st-century commerce, Ocean splashes the histories we thought we knew into salty and unfamiliar places. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Exploring the evolution of prose romance, this work examines its significance in Elizabethan fiction and how late sixteenth-century authors and publishers innovatively blended traditional narratives with a fresh perspective on audience engagement. While prose fiction gained prominence in the eighteenth century, the book argues that its distinct identity began to take shape in England nearly two centuries prior, highlighting its foundational role in the literary landscape.