Ecology Archives - Public Seminar

Reimagining Ecological Repair

A review of Laura J. Martin’s Wild by Design

May 26, 2025 • by Mairéad O’Donnell

The Disney Wilderness Preserve in Florida began as a corporate-led initiative to counteract wetland destruction caused by Disney’s expansion in the Orlando area. Launched in the early 1990s, the project aimed to restore nearly 12,000 acres of wetlands and uplands degraded by decades of cattle ranching, fire suppression, and hydrological ...

Capitalism

Ecology and Democracy in a World on Fire

Our first responsibility, always, is to preserve the world, and our second is to improve it

May 21, 2025 • by Jedediah Britton-Purdy

The following text was first presented on April 22, 2025, as a distinguished lecture presented by the Henry H. Arnhold Forum on Global Challenges and the New School for Social Research. I want to trace the outline of an era that has closed. It ran from roughly the end of the ...

Ecology and Democracy in a World on Fire

Climate & Ecology

Animal Sovereignties and the Wolves of Isle Royale

An excerpt from Interspecies Politics

March 12, 2024 • by Rafi Youatt

The biggest challenge posed by the question of wild animal sovereignties is to the operation of human sovereignty, which itself is figured through animality and in some cases through animals....

Animal Sovereignties and the Wolves of Isle Royale

Climate & Ecology

Ethologies of Animal Politics

Do animals have political cultures?

January 29, 2024 • by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka

Consider the growing ethological evidence of how animal communities themselves do face-to-face politics....

Climate & Ecology

A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history

November 3, 2022 • by Karen Bakker

Human ambivalence about animal language persists and is linked with our uncertainty about human status: Are we one animal among others, or does something truly set us apart? Debates over animal language are a touchstone for human uncertainties about our role in the cosmos....

Event

Land, Water, and Humans in the Bengal Delta

A Public Seminar Book Talk | Debjani Bhattacharyya, Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

June 13, 2020 • by Claire Potter

What happens when a distant colonial power tries to tame an unfamiliar terrain in the world's largest tidal delta? This history of dramatic ecological changes in the Bengal Delta from 1760 to 1920 involves land, water and humans, tracing the stories and struggles that link them together. Pushing beyond narratives ...

Land, Water, and Humans in the Bengal Delta

Feature

Capitalism in the Web of Life: Author Meets Critics

February 16, 2016 • by Zeyno Ustun

Video Minutes: [list] [list_item icon=""] Jason W. Moore Nancy Fraser Eli Zaretsky Q&A [/list_item] [/list] The Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies and the Committee on Historical Studies at the New School for Social Research present Jason W. Moore in conversation with Nancy Fraser and Eli Zaretsky about his book Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015). The conversation was moderated by Christian Parenti. Finance. Climate. Food. Work. How are the crises of the twenty-first century connected? In Capitalism in the Web ...

Capitalism in the Web of Life: Author Meets Critics

Feature

Libidinal Ecology: Sex and the Anthropocene (I)

January 26, 2016 • by Dominic Pettman

In 2013, reports starting circulating in the media that the global best-seller 50 Shades of Grey was beginning to outstay its welcome as a cultural artifact. In the UK alone, it sold 5.3 million copies to that point, even before the film based on the story was released. A large percentage of ...

Uncategorized

Capitalism and Science: A reading of Daniel Boscov-Ellen on Ecology

March 20, 2015 • by Eli Zaretsky

I believe the question of capitalism’s relation to ecological crisis can be clarified by relating capitalism and science. There are strong affinities between these two enterprises. Consider: The medieval world-view was human and/or God-centered. The earth was the center of the universe. The stars and planets rotated in perfect circles. They ...

Uncategorized

On the Heilbroner Center’s Manifesto

Explanation and Critique

April 25, 2014 • by Cinzia Arruzza and Omri Boehm

In our opinion, the document drafted by Julia Ott and Will Milberg for the new Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies should be the beginning of a debate among NSSR faculty about the Center’s mission rather than a final manifesto. There are many claims in the document with ...