Earth Day: Scholarly

Books to recognize the Earth’s seasons, beauty, living beings, past, and future.

Here are books to recognize the Earth's beauty, darkness, splendor, seasons, living beings, past, and future. This set includes scholarly works in environmental studies, ethnography, art, geography, philosophy, animal studies, and more.

BROWSE:

GENERAL INTEREST

MINNESOTA

SCHOLARLY

FULL COLLECTION

Revenant Ecologies Defying the Violence of Extinction and Conservation Audra Mitchell 2023 Fall: Engaging a broad spectrum of ecological thought to articulate the ethical scale of global extinction
The Cactus Hunters Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade Jared D. Margulies 2023 Fall: An exploration of the explosive illegal trade in succulents and the passion that drives it
Estado Vegetal Performance and Plant-Thinking Giovanni Aloi, Editor 2023 Fall: Interdisciplinary essays on Manuela Infante’s award-winning play explore the relationship between critical plant studies and performance art in the Anthropocene
Empirical Ecocriticism Environmental Narratives for Social Change Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, Frank Hakemulder and W. P. Malecki, Editors 2023 Fall: A groundbreaking book that combines the environmental humanities and social sciences to study the impact of environmental stories
Noah’s Arkive Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates 2023 Spring: A timely rethinking of the archetypal story of Noah, the great flood, and who was left behind as the waters rose
Subsurface Karen Pinkus 2023 Spring: A bold new consideration of climate change between narratives of the Earth’s layers and policy of the present
Settling Nature The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel 2023 Spring: Studying nature conservation in Palestine-Israel through the lens of settler colonialism
Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian Arctic Charlotte Wrigley 2023 Spring: Exploring one of the greatest potential contributors to climate change—thawing permafrost—and the anxiety of extinction on an increasingly hostile planet
The Environmental Unconscious Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton Steven Swarbrick 2023 Spring: Bringing psychoanalysis to bear on the diagnosis of ecological crisis
Rubber Boots Methods for the Anthropocene Doing Fieldwork in Multispecies Worlds Nils Bubandt, Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen and Rachel Cypher, Editors 2022 Fall: A methodological follow-up to Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
Settling the Boom The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil Mary E. Thomas and Bruce Braun, Editors 2022 Fall: Examines how settler colonial and sexist infrastructures and narratives order a resource boom
The Lichen Museum A. Laurie Palmer 2023 Spring: A radical proposal for how a tiny organism can transform our understanding of human relations
Citizens of Worlds Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle Jennifer Gabrys 2022 Fall: An unparalleled how-to guide to citizen-sensing practices that monitor air pollution
Endlings Fables for the Anthropocene Lydia Pyne 2023 Spring: Amid the historical decimation of species around the globe, a new way into the language of loss
Rescue Me On Dogs and Their Humans Margret Grebowicz 2023 Spring: What exactly is it we want from dogs today?
Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth The Gothic Anthropocene Justin D. Edwards, Rune Graulund and Johan Höglund, Editors 2022 Spring: An urgent volume of essays engages the Gothic to advance important perspectives on our geological era
Tsuchi Earthy Materials in Contemporary Japanese Art Bert Winther-Tamaki 2022 Spring: An examination of Japanese contemporary art through the lens of ecocriticism and environmental history
Plant Life The Entangled Politics of Afforestation Rosetta S. Elkin 2022 Spring: How afforestation reveals the often-concealed politics between humans and plants
Pipeline Populism Grassroots Environmentalism in the Twenty-First Century Kai Bosworth 2022 Spring: How contemporary environmental struggles and resistance to pipeline development became populist struggles
The Owls Are Not What They Seem Artist as Ethologist Arnaud Gerspacher 2022 Fall: Toward a posthumanist art and ethology
Solarities Seeking Energy Justice After Oil Collective Ayesha Vemuri and Darin Barney, Editors 2022 Fall: A collective engages and mirrors the critical need for energy justice and transformation
Does the Earth Care? Indifference, Providence, and Provisional Ecology Mick Smith and Jason Young 2022 Fall: Rethinking our relationship with Earth in a time of environmental emergency
Out of Breath Vulnerability of Air in Contemporary Art Caterina Albano 2022 Fall: Explores the intrinsic relation of life to air, and breathing, through contemporary art
Animal Revolution Ron Broglio 2022 Spring: Why our failure to consider the power of animals is to our deep detriment
Earthworks Rising Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts Chadwick Allen 2022 Spring: A necessary reexamination of Indigenous mounds, demonstrating their sustained vitality and vibrant futurity by centering Native voices
Accumulation The Art, Architecture, and Media of Climate Change Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Daniel A. Barber and Anton Vidokle, Editors 2022 Spring: Examines how images of accumulation help open up the climate to political mobilization
Eco Soma Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters Petra Kuppers 2022 Spring: Modeling a disability culture perspective on performance practice toward socially just futures
Art and Posthumanism Essays, Encounters, Conversations Cary Wolfe 2021 Fall: A sustained engagement between contemporary art and philosophy relating to our place in, and responsibility to, the nonhuman world
Life in Plastic Artistic Responses to Petromodernity Caren Irr, Editor 2021 Fall: A vital contribution to environmental humanities that explores artistic responses to the plastic age
Building on Borrowed Time Rising Seas and Failing Infrastructure in Semarang Lukas Ley 2021 Fall: A timely ethnography of how Indonesia’s coastal dwellers inhabit the “chronic present” of a slow-motion natural disaster
Calamity Theory Three Critiques of Existential Risk Joshua Schuster and Derek Woods 2021 Fall: What are the implications of how we talk about apocalypse?
The Three Sustainabilities Energy, Economy, Time Allan Stoekl 2021 Fall: Bringing the word sustainability back from the brink of cliché—to a substantive, truly sustainable future
Assuming the Ecosexual Position The Earth as Lover Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens 2021 Spring: The story of the artistic collaboration between the originators of the ecosex movement, their diverse communities, and the Earth
Saving Animals Multispecies Ecologies of Rescue and Care Elan Abrell 2021 Spring: A fascinating and unprecedented ethnography of animal sanctuaries in the United States
Timescales Thinking across Ecological Temporalities Bethany Wiggin, Carolyn Fornoff and Patricia Eunji Kim, Editors 2020 Fall: Humanists, scientists, and artists collaborate to address the disjunctive temporalities of ecological crisis
Drawing the Sea Near Satoumi and Coral Reef Conservation in Okinawa C. Anne Claus 2020 Fall: How Japanese coastal residents and transnational conservationists collaborated to foster relationships between humans and sea life
The Probiotic Planet Using Life to Manage Life Jamie Lorimer 2020 Fall: Assesses a promising new approach to restoring the health of our bodies and our planet
Radioactive Ghosts Gabriele Schwab 2020 Fall: A pioneering examination of nuclear trauma, the continuing and new nuclear peril, and the subjectivities they generate
Infrastructures of Apocalypse American Literature and the Nuclear Complex Jessica Hurley 2020 Fall: A new approach to the vast nuclear infrastructure and the apocalypses it produces, focusing on Black, queer, Indigenous, and Asian American literatures
Capture American Pursuits and the Making of a New Animal Condition Antoine Traisnel 2020 Fall: Reading canonical works of the nineteenth century through the modern transformation of human–animal relations
Gaian Systems Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene Bruce Clarke 2020 Fall: A groundbreaking look at Gaia theory’s intersections with neocybernetic systems theory
Thinking Plant Animal Human Encounters with Communities of Difference David Wood 2020 Spring: Collected essays by a leading philosopher situating the question of the animal in the broader context of a relational ontology
Things Worth Keeping The Value of Attachment in a Disposable World Christine Harold 2020 Spring: A timely examination of the attachments we form to objects and how they might be used to reduce waste
Red Gold The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna Jennifer E. Telesca 2020 Spring: Illuminating the conditions for global governance to have precipitated the devastating decline of one of the ocean’s most majestic creatures
Playing Nature Ecology in Video Games Alenda Y. Chang 2019 Fall: A potent new book examines the overlap between our ecological crisis and video games
Bleak Joys Aesthetics of Ecology and Impossibility Matthew Fuller and Olga Goriunova 2019 Fall: A philosophical and cultural distillation of the bleak joys in today’s ambivalent ecologies and patterns of life
An Ecotopian Lexicon Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Brent Ryan Bellamy, Editors 2019 Fall: Presents thirty novel terms that do not yet exist in English to envision ways of responding to the environmental challenges of our generation
Homesickness Of Trauma and the Longing for Place in a Changing Environment Ryan Hediger 2019 Fall: Introducing a posthumanist concept of nostalgia to analyze steadily widening themes of animality, home, travel, slavery, shopping, and war in U.S. literature after 1945
Standing with Standing Rock Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon, Editors 2019 Spring: Dispatches of radical political engagement from people taking a stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline
How to Do Things with Sensors Jennifer Gabrys 2019 Fall: An investigation of how-to guides for sensor technologies
Break Up the Anthropocene Steve Mentz 2019 Fall: Takes the singular eco-catastrophic “Age of Man” and redefines this epoch
Theory for the World to Come Speculative Fiction and Apocalyptic Anthropology Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer 2019 Spring: Can social theories forge new paths into an uncertain future?
Design, Nature, and Revolution Toward a Critical Ecology Tomás Maldonado 2019 Spring
Reimagining Livelihoods Life beyond Economy, Society, and Environment Ethan Miller 2019 Spring: A provocative reassessment of the concepts underlying the struggle for sustainable development
Anthropocene Poetics Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction David Farrier 2019 Spring: How poetry can help us think about and live in the Anthropocene by reframing our intimate relationship with geological time
A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None Kathryn Yusoff 2019 Spring: Rewriting the “origin stories” of the Anthropocene
Bad Environmentalism Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age Nicole Seymour 2018 Fall: Traces a tradition of ironic and irreverent environmentalism, asking us to rethink the movement’s reputation for gloom and doom
After Extinction Richard Grusin, Editor 2018 Spring: A multidisciplinary exploration of extinction and what comes next
The End of Man A Feminist Counterapocalypse Joanna Zylinska 2018 Spring: Debugging the Anthropocene’s insistence on apocalyptic tropes
Veer Ecology A Companion for Environmental Thinking Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert, Editors 2017 Fall: An innovative toolkit designed to prompt new awareness of the risk and potential of living on—and with—an alarmingly dynamic planet
Ecology without Culture Aesthetics for a Toxic World Christine L. Marran 2017 Fall: Reconfiguring the intentions and parameters of ecocriticism
Being Together in Place Indigenous Coexistence in a More Than Human World Soren C. Larsen and Jay T. Johnson 2017 Fall: How place summons Native and non-Native people into dialogue to take up the challenging work of coexistence with each other and the nonhuman world
When the Hills Are Gone Frac Sand Mining and the Struggle for Community Thomas W. Pearson 2017 Fall: An overlooked part of fracking’s environmental impact becomes a window into the activists and industrial interests fighting for the future of energy production—and the fate of rural communities
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt, Editors 2017 Spring: Can humans and other species continue to inhabit the earth together?
The Language of Plants Science, Philosophy, Literature Monica Gagliano, John C. Ryan and Patrícia Vieira, Editors 2017 Spring: Exploring the idea that plants can think, feel, and communicate as a way of reconfiguring our relationship with the natural world
For All Waters Finding Ourselves in Early Modern Wetscapes Lowell Duckert 2017 Spring: The Shakespearean era’s wet writers guide our eco-way today
Matters of Care Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds María Puig de la Bellacasa 2017 Spring: Challenging the view that caring is only human
Curated Decay Heritage beyond Saving Caitlin DeSilvey 2017 Spring: A bold new approach to heritage conservation that embraces change and accommodates decay
Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast A Multispecies Impression Julian Yates 2017 Spring: Refocusing our lens on literature and history to lives beyond the human
Against Purity Living Ethically in Compromised Times Alexis Shotwell 2016 Fall: Why contamination and compromise might be a starting point for doing something, instead of a reason to give up
The Child to Come Life after the Human Catastrophe Rebekah Sheldon 2016 Fall: A bold new reading of the child for the twenty-first century, with implications for contemporary environmentalism
Fuel A Speculative Dictionary Karen Pinkus 2016 Fall: Undoing the dream of free, clean power from A to Z
Exposed Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times Stacy Alaimo 2016 Fall: A bold call to approach environmentalism from the inside out
What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? Vinciane Despret 2016 Spring: A provocative challenge to the marginalization of “humanlike” aspects of animal life
Program Earth Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet Jennifer Gabrys 2016 Spring: How sensors are changing our environmental relationships
Freegans Diving into the Wealth of Food Waste in America Alex V. Barnard 2016 Spring: Freegans, who try to live on what we throw away, reveal the limits of capitalism but also the limits of consumer activism in changing it
Elemental Ecocriticism Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert, Editors 2015 Fall: Brings to ecotheory and the environmental humanities the challenges and possibilities offered by thinking in elemental terms
Militarizing the Environment Climate Change and the Security State Robert P. Marzec 2016 Spring: How ideas of coexisting with the planet are being replaced by a militarized vision of adaptation
Shipwreck Modernity Ecologies of Globalization, 1550–1719 Steve Mentz 2015 Fall: The familiar story of shipwreck revealed as an allegory of ecological catastrophe
Border Walls Gone Green Nature and Anti-immigrant Politics in America John Hultgren 2015 Fall: Why anti-immigration environmentalists need to reconsider their motives
Hope at Sea Possible Ecologies in Oceanic Literature Teresa Shewry 2015 Fall: Hope is a lifeline running through the work of literary writers in and surrounding the Pacific Ocean
Leverage of the Weak Labor and Environmental Movements in Taiwan and South Korea Hwa-Jen Liu 2015 Fall: Why do social movements appear at different times in a nation’s development?
Roots of Our Renewal Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance Clint Carroll 2015 Spring: Highlights the complexities for indigenous Americans of governing a state while caring for the environment
Wastelanding Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country Traci Brynne Voyles 2015 Spring: What is “wasteland,” and who gets to decide?
Stone An Ecology of the Inhuman Jeffrey Jerome Cohen 2015 Spring: A beautifully written account of stone’s intimacy to what it means to be human
Wildlife in the Anthropocene Conservation after Nature Jamie Lorimer 2015 Spring: Considers the effects of the Anthropocene era on approaches to conservation
Counting Species Biodiversity in Global Environmental Politics Rafi Youatt 2015 Spring: How has the idea of biodiversity reconstructed political realities?
No Speed Limit Three Essays on Accelerationism Steven Shaviro 2015 Spring: Proposes a vision of survival and flourishing in the face of economic and environmental catastrophe
The Anthrobscene Jussi Parikka 2015 Spring: Critiques the environmental destruction caused by media technologies in the anthropocene era
Aesop’s Anthropology A Multispecies Approach John Hartigan Jr. 2015 Spring: What can we learn about culture from other species?
Oil Culture Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden, Editors 2014 Fall: The cultural life of oil—from aesthetics and politics to economy and ecology
The Price of Thirst Global Water Inequality and the Coming Chaos Karen Piper 2014 Fall: Imagine a world where water is only for those who can afford it. We’re already there.
Total Liberation The Power and Promise of Animal Rights and the Radical Earth Movement David Naguib Pellow 2014 Fall: All oppression is linked: radical environmental and animal liberation movements in the struggle for social justice
Prismatic Ecology Ecotheory beyond Green Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Editor 2013 Fall: Traces the impress and agency of ecologies that cannot be reduced to the bucolic expanses of green readings
Hyperobjects Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World Timothy Morton 2013 Fall: The world as we know it has already come to an end
Ariel’s Ecology Plantations, Personhood, and Colonialism in the American Tropics Monique Allewaert 2013 Spring: Rethinking the boundaries between humans and nonhumans in early America
Trash Animals How We Live with Nature’s Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species Kelsi Nagy and Phillip David Johnson II, Editors 2013 Spring: From pigeons to prairie dogs, reflections on reviled animals and their place in contemporary life
Picturing the Cosmos Hubble Space Telescope Images and the Astronomical Sublime Elizabeth A. Kessler 2012 Fall: A revealing look at the Romantic impulse behind the Hubble telescope’s awe-inspiring deep space images
Vampyroteuthis Infernalis A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste Vilém Flusser and Louis Bec 2012 Fall: Pondering the human condition while examining the vampire squid from hell
Biogea Michel Serres 2012 Fall: Presents a philosophy that merges the humanities with all creation
Two Lessons on Animal and Man Gilbert Simondon 2012 Fall: The increasingly influential French philosopher presents the history of philosophical discourse in regard to humans, animals, and the vegetal
Everyday Environmentalism Creating an Urban Political Ecology Alex Loftus 2012 Spring: A bold rethinking of urban political ecology
Surface Encounters Thinking with Animals and Art Ron Broglio 2011 Fall: Developing a phenomenology of the animal other through contemporary art
The Neoliberal Deluge Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans Cedric Johnson, Editor 2011 Fall: A critical collection on the politics of disaster and reconstruction in New Orleans
A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans with A Theory of Meaning Jakob von Uexküll 2010 Fall: The influential work of speculative biology—and a key document in posthumanist studies—now available in a new, accurate English translation
The Ethics of Earth Art Amanda Boetzkes 2010 Spring: Analyzing the ethical stance of the earth art movement from the 1960s to the present
Removing Mountains Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields Rebecca R. Scott 2010 Fall: Coal country lives in southern West Virginia
Trouble in the Forest California’s Redwood Timber Wars Richard Widick 2009 Fall: The long social history of California’s conflict over ancient forests and its impact today
Animal Capital Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times Nicole Shukin 2009 Spring: Illuminates the profound contingency of market life on animal figures and flesh
When Species Meet Donna J. Haraway 2007 Fall: Whom do we touch when we touch a dog? How does this touch shape our multispecies world?
Bataille’s Peak Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability Allan Stoekl 2007 Fall: An audacious exploration of Bataille’s philosophy of energy within current conservation debates
Rain Forest Literatures Amazonian Texts and Latin American Culture Lucia Sá 2004 Spring: Recaptures native literatures of the Amazonian rain forest
Space and Place The Perspective of Experience Yi-Fu Tuan 2001 Spring: On the 25th anniversary of its publication, a new edition of this foundational work on human geography.