Dust Bowls of Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Holleman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Soil Degradation ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Dust Bowl ◽  
Southern Plains ◽  
Ecological Degradation ◽  
Innovative Research ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
The U.S

The 1930s witnessed a harrowing social and ecological disaster, defined by the severe nexus of drought, erosion, and economic depression that ravaged the U.S. southern plains. Known as the Dust Bowl, this crisis has become a major referent of the climate change era, and has long served as a warning of the dire consequences of unchecked environmental despoliation. Through innovative research and a fresh theoretical lens, this book reexamines the global socioecological and economic forces of settler colonialism and imperialism precipitating this disaster, explaining critical antecedents to the acceleration of ecological degradation in our time. The book draws lessons from this period that point a way forward for environmental politics as we confront the growing global crises of climate change, freshwater scarcity, extreme energy, and soil degradation.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Hannah Holleman
Keyword(s):  
Global Market ◽  
Dust Storms ◽  
Dust Bowl ◽  
Static Electricity ◽  
Southern Plains ◽  
The World ◽  
Dry Conditions ◽  
Crop Agriculture ◽  
The U.S

This introductory chapter provides a background of the 1930s Dust Bowl on the U.S. southern plains, where the ancient grasslands that protected the soil from prairie winds and rains and nourished regional species were destroyed within just a few decades, following the violent opening of the plains to white settlement and the global market in the 1800s. Under pressure from the vagaries of the world economy, settlers sheared the land to expand cash-crop agriculture and ranching. As major drought descended on the plains, winds and static electricity lifted the desiccated, exposed topsoil, forming dust storms on an unprecedented scale. Such massive loss of soil and continued dry conditions meant the land could no longer support life as it once had. By the end of the 1930s, tens of thousands of people were displaced. Hence, when scientists today predict the increasing possibility of Dust Bowl-like conditions, they are signaling a particular kind of extreme ecological and social change.

scholarly journals Staying Alive: Science Fiction in the Age of the Anthropocene — Philip K. Dick’s Pessimistic Humanism

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tallulah Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Scientific Advancement ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

In recent years, literary studies have become increasingly invested in environmentalism. As science reveals the negative impacts of climate change, and demonstrates a growing concern for humanity’s contribution, literature operates as a form of cultural documentation. It details public awareness and anxieties, and acts as a conduit for change by urging empathetic responses and rendering ecological controversy accessible.To explore the relationship between literature and environmental politics, this paper will focus on the work of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, and his dystopian visions. In his particular brand of sci-fi, there is no future for humanity. Science and technology fail to pave the way for a better and fairer society, but rather towards, as far as Dick is concerned, extinction. He argues that scientific advancement distances us from reality and from a sense of “humanness”. His pessimistic futures are nihilistic but tender; nurturing a love for humanity even in, what he considers to be, its final hours.Unlike the work of other prominent sci-fi writers, Dick’s fiction does not look towards the stars, but is in many ways a return to earth. The barren landscapes of Mars and other planets offer no comfort, and the evolution of the human into cyborgs, androids and post human species is depicted as dangerous and regressive. Dick’s apocalyptic visions ground his readers in the reality around them, acting in the present for the sake of the earth and humanity’s survival. His humanism is critical of grand enlightenment ideas of “progressivism”, and instead celebrates ordinariness. In the shadow of corporate capitalism and violent dictatorial governments, Dick prefers the little man, the ordinary everyday domestic hero for his narratives. His fiction urges us to take responsibility for our actions, and prepares us for the future through scepticism and pessimism, and a relentless fondness for the human.

scholarly journals Towards a ‘Political’ Tibullus: Ceres and Grain in Elegies Books 1 and 2

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-35
Author(s):  
Victoria Jansson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The U.S

This article argues that unfulfilled prayers to Ceres in Tibullus’ elegies are symptomatic of Rome’s grain crises at the end of the Republic and beginning of Empire. My approach includes philological, socioeconomic, and psychoanalytic analysis of the elegies, in which the poet examines the shifting definition of a ‘Roman’ in his day. I seek to demonstrate the ways in which the poet grapples with the political and economic forces at work during the most turbulent period of Roman history: a time when income inequality was roughly equivalent to that of the U.S. and E.U. today.1

scholarly journals Golden Eagle Perch-Site Use in the U.S. Southern Plains: Understanding Electrocution Risk

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
James F. Dwyer ◽  
Robert K. Murphy ◽  
Dale W. Stahlecker ◽  
Angela M. Dwyer ◽  
Clint W. Boal
Keyword(s):  
Golden Eagle ◽  
Southern Plains ◽  
Site Use ◽  
The U.S

scholarly journals Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the U.S. Temperature-Mortality Relationship over the 20th Century

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Barreca ◽  
Karen Clay ◽  
Olivier Deschenes ◽  
Michael Greenstone ◽  
Joseph Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The U.S
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