Flaptekst

This fascinating essay collection, drawn from the nascent field of the environmental humanities, breaks new ground with its interdisciplinary insights into the multifaceted relations between water and human societies. The essays range across diverse themes including alternative hydrological imaginaries and decolonial perspectives on water engineering.--Matthew Gandy, author of The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination Water's power, purpose, and meaning cannot be contained by any one scholarly discipline. Understanding the value of water in a time of climate catastrophe demands more-than-human humanities, and Hydrohumanities answers this call.--Astrida Niemanis, author of Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology Hydrohumanities demonstrates how the humanities play a leadership role in envisioning and enacting social, cultural, and infrastructural change in an era of scarce resources, slow violence, and climate emergency. The essays provocatively think with water through its shape-shifting, agential qualities, and the results channel new possibilities for the planet's aquatic future.--Laura Winkiel, author of Modernism, Race, and Manifestos and editor of Hydro-criticism, a special issue of English Language Notes Hydrohumanities establishes studies of water as an urgent, central topic in the environmental humanities. It recognizes that water is not simply a commodity, but has agency; that water can both define and destabilize economic, symbolic, magical, and salvational identities; that water is inseparable from mapping region and nation; and that therefore water is always inseparable from political culture.--David E. Nye, author of Conflicted American Landscapes and American Technological Sublime This book calls for a humanities that attends to animal, plant, fungal, and microbial power as well as to those geological, hydrological, and machine-like forces that operate as agencies out of full human control. Hydrohumanities speaks fluently and fluidly about power, human and nonhuman, all the way through. --Stefan Helmreich, Professor of Anthropology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology