The prominence of “extinction” and “Irish” in this week’s wordcloud has the capacity to get the “What about Irish Slaves?” charmers up in arms.
This week illustrates the anxiety around environmental politics in the United States and the growing prominence of topics like extinction in public and scholarly dialogues. In environmental history we are increasingly looking at the role of animals – such as dogs – in our work, chipping away at the anthropocentric nature of humanities scholarship.
This week’s wordcloud also highlights both historical (Irish) and contemporary (African) issues surrounding nationality and immigration/travel to the United States. Lastly, the prominence of “memes” and “blogs” shows the growing role of online commentary and the evolving means by which historians and other scholars can reach a public audience.
Here are the top articles amongst environmental historians and humanities scholars this past week (March 13-March 19, 2017):
Monday: “Mimi Matthews, ‘Dog Funerals in the late Victorian Era” by Lucinda Matthew-Jones, Journal of Victorian Culture Online
Tuesday: “Dear Academics, It Is Time To Write, Read And Properly Cite More Blogs” by Sarah Bond, Forbes
Wednesday: “The Transparency Bills That Would Gut the EPA” by Ed Young, The Atlantic
Thursday: “Five Things You Didn’t Realize Were Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities” by Erin Blakemore, Smithsonian.com
Friday: “Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too” by Liam Stack, New York Times
Saturday: “On the Origin of Extinction” by Benjamin Morgan, Public Books
Sunday: “Africa Trade Meeting Has No Africans After US Visa Denials“, VOA
Top Words
1. extinction
2. EPA
3. people
4. Irish
5. history
6. said
7. can
8. dog
9. nature
10. Act
Jessica M. DeWitt: Editing and Consulting 