April 22, 2024

A Systems Thinking Approach to Teaching About Climate Change

Cassie Xu and Radhika Iyengar

Climate change is one of the largest threats for humanity and has already had a significant impact globally and locally. It is perhaps the most defining issue of our time. It will ultimately test how communities, cities, and countries around...

April 15, 2024

Changing the Media Environment to Protect Climate Activists

Adrienne Russell

Activism serves as an essential channel of communication from the public to policy makers, corporations, and other powerful actors. It is precisely because of its essential ro­­le in governance (and even capitalist arrangements, such as so-called voting with your pocketbook)...

April 11, 2024

Matthew Fraleigh on The Same Moon Shines on All

The last few decades have been a time of great change for the field of Japanese literary studies. The scope of the category “Japanese literature” is very differently conceptualized than it was just a generation ago; it now embraces a...

April 10, 2024

What’s the Difference Between a Tree and a Building? Sometimes Nothing.

Dickson Despommier

The New City: How to Build Our Urban Sustainable Future is about the urban environment and how to make it a safer place for us to live in and, at the same time, dramatically reduce its effects on rapid climate...

April 9, 2024

Jonathan Chaves on Yanagawa Seigan

Perhaps the largest body of great poetry in the world as yet undiscovered is the verse composed by Japanese authors not in Japanese, but in literary Chinese (C., wenyan; J., bungen). The phenomenon of great literature written in a language...

April 8, 2024

The Power of the Shuar:

How a Small Group of Indigenous People Protected Large Forests

Thomas K. Rudel

Affluent farmers and wealthy groups of investors have continued to destroy extensive tracts of tropical forests in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America over these past forty years. The ongoing loss of these old growth forests has intensified the biodiversity...

April 2, 2024

André Colomer, the Action of the Arts, and the Importance of Poetry

Oskar De Wolf

– An individualist anarchist? To the uninitiated, it may appear somewhat peculiar that an individualist anarchist is a part of poetry month at the Columbia University Press blog. Anarchism has a well-earned reputation for being a little cold, a little...

April 1, 2024

Five Fascinating Facts About Earth’s Ancient Climate

Donald R. Prothero

Earth’s ancient climate reveals a history of extreme transformations—from a greenhouse world of sweltering temperatures and high sea levels to a “snowball earth” in which glaciers reached the equator. In The Story of Earth’s Climate in 25 Discoveries, Donald R....

March 26, 2024

Reckoning the Fire:

Seven Themes to Consider When Reading Firekeeper

Katłıà

Firekeeper is a coming-of-age story centered on a young woman who finds herself on a reserve as a firekeeper after an unsettling childhood. As we celebrate the contributions of women throughout history, Katłıà’s storytelling invites readers to reflect on what...

March 20, 2024

The Untold History of Women’s Death by Laughter

Maggie Hennefeld

“Those who do not remember the joke are doomed to continue laughing at it.” —An unidentified feminist philosopher. What is the funniest joke you’ve ever heard? And have you ever laughed so hard you thought you might explode? In 1907,...

March 13, 2024

The Subtle Art of Messaging:

How Far-Right Women Use Social Media to Shape Public Opinion

Eviane Leidig

“Using your baby to virtue signal alliance with a violent political movement is a new low for white women.” This is how a far-right woman influencer describes a photo of a woman holding her baby in a carrier at a...

March 8, 2024

International Women’s Day:

Remembering Mary C. McCall Jr. and the Unfinished Battle for Women’s Rights

J. E. Smyth

It’s International Women’s Day, and women’s rights are being rolled back all over the world, perhaps, mostly notably, in the country that hosted the first International Women’s Day in 1909—the United States. Globally, women still make less money per hour...