Beyond the Binary

Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theory of binary opposition considers oppositional categories as a fundamental effect of human cognition. Humans, Lévi-Strauss argues, structure the world and their existence in it by way of symbolic oppositions that are represented and negotiated analogically. Nineteenth-century writing about nonhuman nature has been commonly regarded as a male-dominated field focusing on encounters with nature as a feminized other that resides in contraposition to man and manmade settings. This essay seeks to theorize the inconsistencies represented in feminized nature, to lay bare the ways in which scholarly interpretations of nature writing are traditionally structured around binary boundaries, and to reassess the conceptual framework of feminist geography, which has historically employed a dichotomous structure to expose traditional representations of gender. Susan Fenimore Cooper’s Rural Hours and Celia Thaxter’s Among the Isles of Shoals each illustrate an awareness of the transcorporeality of human bodies and ecological spaces as enmeshed in a complex, shifting ontology. Both writers attempt to reconstruct an inclusive “non-gendered” ecology that transforms the binary landscapes of “village-woods” and “island-garden” into non-hierarchical vistas that de-enforce the subservience of nature, making these spaces compatible, harmonious, and synergistic.

Sonar and LiDAR investigation of lineaments offshore between central New England and the New England seamounts, USA

High-resolution multibeam echosounder (MBES) and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data, combined with regional gravity and aeromagnetic anomaly maps of the western Gulf of Maine, reveal numerous lineaments between central New England and the New England seamounts. Most of these lineaments crosscut the NE-SWtrending accreted terranes, suggesting that they may be surface expressions of deep basement-rooted faults that have fractured upward through the overlying accreted terranes or may have formed by the upward push of magmas produced by the New England hotspot. The 1755 Cape Ann earthquake may have occurred on a fault associated with one of these lineaments. The MBES data also reveal a NW-SE-oriented scarp just offshore from Biddeford Pool, Maine (Biddeford Pool scarp), a 60-km-long, 20-km-wide Isles of Shoals lineament zone just offshore from southeastern New Hampshire, a 50-m-long zone of mostly low-lying, WNW-ESE-trending, submerged ridge-like features and scarps east of Boston, Massachusetts, and a ~180-km-long, WNW-ESE-trending Olympus lineament zone that traverses the continental margin south of Georges Bank. Three submarine canyons are sinistrally offset ~1–1.2 km along the Thresher canyon lineament of the Olympus lineament zone.

Once More with Feeling: Re-investigating the Smuttynose Island Murders

During the night of March 5, 1873, two Norwegian women were murdered on Smuttynose Island in the Isles of Shoals off the New Hampshire coast. The crime has attracted significant and enduring attention. This article examines two depictions of the murders—Celia Thaxter’s 1875 essay “A Memorable Murder” and Kathryn Bigelow’s film from 2000 The Weight of Water, an adaptation of Anita Shreve’s novel of the same name. Employing psychoanalytic thinking inspired by the theories of Melanie Klein and Ruth Riesenberg-Malcolm, I examine how these literary and filmic re-enactments facilitate the reviving of the past in the present and how they foster an experience akin to transference as it is conceived in the analytic situation.

Experience With Moored Observations in the Western Gulf of Maine From 2006 to 2012

The University of New Hampshire is studying CO2 gas exchange, ocean acidification, air-sea dynamics, and associated biological processes in the western Gulf of Maine. Two buoys provide data supporting these studies. The UNH CO2 buoy has been deployed jointly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory northeast of the Isles of Shoals since 2006. The Jeffreys Ledge Moored Observatory is a development mooring testing new techniques and is deployed east of Gloucester, MA. This mooring is testing the direct covariance measurement of wind stress using a 3-D sonic anemometer with a motion package to remove buoy motion effects. A fast-rate atmospheric CO2 sensor is mounted by the anemometer to evaluate its potential for direct covariance gas flux measurements. Both buoys have additional meteorological and oceanographic sensors to provide supporting measurements. Six years of CO2 buoy data have helped quantify the seasonal air-sea flux cycle of CO2 in the Western Gulf of Maine. The buoy is now a node in near-term ocean carbon cycle process control experiments and longer-term ocean acidification monitoring. The Jeffreys Ledge buoy momentum flux measurements using wind and motion measurements indicate reasonable first-order buoy motion corrections can be made. Also, buoy-induced flow disturbance requires postmeasurement corrections. Rapid buoy azimuthal rotations were corrected with the addition of a steering vane. A vertical array of oxygen sensors captures phytoplankton bloom signatures and provides net community production estimates that augment in-water SAMI-CO2 measurements and add to a robust system to support process studies and improved biophysical modeling within this region.