Bathsheba Demuth
@brdemuth.bsky.social
Writer & environmental historian of cold places, now writing about the Yukon River. Author of FLOATING COAST. Prof at Brown University. Post mostly about animals, Arctic things & books. Heart is on a dogsled. #envhist #naturewriting
Great review of a book I devoured in a few days 📚
Nathan K. Hensley@nathankhensley.bsky.social · 3w ago“To the extent that the ELF was a political project, it did not give much thought to long-term goals or building power. Its focus was action… but its members’ eventual disillusionment with their own tactics—& failure to achieve lasting change—seems to speak for itself.” Bleak, important review here
These photos of FNs community members fleeing their homes by boat are genuinely apocalyptic (Photo via Wayne Wastaken of Collins, Ontario, who says his “hometown is gone”) www.facebook.com/share/r/1ArN...
I am apparently in my Dad Disaster History summer reading-wise: so far, we have the Challenger space shuttle, Chernobyl, several shipwrecks, 1929, range of Nazis, and the mess at Waco. Other recommendations very welcome.
Storm brewing on a Yukon River side channel in the delta — and some expert boating.
Excited to announce the (very swiftly) upcoming tour dates for the East Coast leg of my book tour! Can't wait to talk with all of these brilliant folks—including @brdemuth.bsky.social and @sandyernestallen.bsky.social—about tree-climbing and 'tree-thinking'.
absolute stunner from @brdemuth.bsky.social on greenland + american empire; i was today years old when i learned grandpapa trump got his start as an extremely-used-horse salesman in the arctic www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
Strategic Amnesia | Bathsheba Demuth
Denying that history could have been otherwise or making conquest subject to some unwritten statute of limitations are both ways of cloaking not just the US’s imperial past but its continuation into t...
nplusonemag.com
Back from an amazing week on the lower Yukon River and the Bering Sea, with so much dancing and talking and boating and sunshine and rain and even a few summer chum salmon from the test fishery. Many thanks to the people of Emmonak, St Mary’s, and Pilot Station for the welcome
Well this is just bloody brilliant from @brdemuth.bsky.social on American empire and the Arctic. Was gob-smacked to read that 40% of US territory was purchased. Totally shifts the context for trying to buy Greenland. www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
Strategic Amnesia | Bathsheba Demuth
Denying that history could have been otherwise or making conquest subject to some unwritten statute of limitations are both ways of cloaking not just the US’s imperial past but its continuation into t...
nplusonemag.com
On the long American tradition of buying sovereignty, Greenland, colonialism, an AI penguin, and the grimy history of the president’s grandfather in the far north www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
Strategic Amnesia | Bathsheba Demuth
Denying that history could have been otherwise or making conquest subject to some unwritten statute of limitations are both ways of cloaking not just the US’s imperial past but its continuation into t...
nplusonemag.com
Look what book is now *available* for preorder!! @rebecca-altman.bsky.social’s SONG OF STYRENE coming next April. Important and gorgeous. Also that cover!! #envhist #envhum #plastics www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-So...
The Song of Styrene
A personal history of plastics, written by a plastic-maker’s daughter turned environmental sociologist who, for the past decade, has searched for t...
simonandschuster.com
Great bookmail to return home to! @robertmoor.com’s newest — and I’m very much anticipating discussing this gorgeous work with him on July 12 at RiffRaff in Providence 🌳🌲
Great bookmail to return home to! @robertmoor.com’s newest — and I’m very much anticipating discussing this gorgeous work with him on July 12 at RiffRaff in Providence 🌳🌲
A gorgeous and exacting piece by Max Liboiron, on plastics and science and birds and much more placesjournal.org/article/thro...
Through the Guts
What can plastic fragments found in an animal’s digestive tract tell us about the waters it has traversed?
placesjournal.org
Hi pals! I've got something I'm REALLY excited about in the works... I'll be editing a nonfiction anthology about the Yukon River. Timelines are tight so I'm mostly seeking out existing work (in your publication archive, sitting on your hard drive...) Please submit / share! forms.gle/Q622LYHExe7x...
Fox hunting on the banks of the Yukon in Whitehorse this morning
En voilà un excellent article. La thèse ? Arrêtons avec « agentivité » à toutes les sauces en histoire environnementale et intéressons nous plutôt à la continuité : « rien n’est peut-être plus radical que d’identifier dans le passé les conditions nécessaires à la continuité. »
Comment écrire l’histoire environnementale aujourd'hui ?
Bathsheba Demuth · Baleines, virus, sols... Quelle rôle attribuer aux non-humains dans la pratique de l'histoire ? Analyse d'une question cruciale.
terrestres.org
An exceptional Alaska lit mail day! I’m heading to #AWP26 (my first AWP!) later this week, and am very excited about my travel reading.
Midway through the three feet of snow that came to Providence in the last 24 hours, overtaking the Blizzard of ‘78 record. My
The world is so very bad, but this week we hung in our house a tapestry my mother wove, my father made the wooden hanger for with salmon-shaped hardware my brother cast out of copper, based on a photo I made on the middle fork of the Koyukuk River. It feels like the confluence of many homes.
"Industry, for the growing European middle classes, first meant freedom from want—from the real tyrannies of hunger and cold—and then freedom to want. Consumption itself became a kind of liberty." Beautifully about Svalbard and the world by @brdemuth.bsky.social hakaimagazine.com/features/foo...
Footprints of Extraction | Hakai Magazine
The Svalbard Archipelago was uninhabited until humans came searching for resources. A historian follows their tracks.
hakaimagazine.com
"Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait" by @brdemuth.bsky.social, Dean's Associate Professor at IBES and @brownhist.bsky.social, has been selected as the 2025-2026 Brown University Book Award 📕🏆 👏 Learn more: insite.browntextbook.com/BrownBookAward
I can endorse working with @greenleejw.bsky.social for maps if you’re looking! He helped with a whole series of custom maps for an edited volume on rivers coming out in about a year — all sorts of scales and details
Surprised Eel Historian, PhD@greenleejw.bsky.social · 7mo agoWill you be working this year on a book or article that's going to need #maps? Let me help! I draw custom maps for a living! I draw each map by hand, to my clients' specifications, & each is unique. You can find out more on my website: surprisedeelmaps.com Here's some recent examples of my work:
@brdemuth.bsky.social's essay in @grantamag.bsky.social on time spent in the Yukon piecing together oral histories of the Russian empire. Read it to the end; no spoilers! granta.com/where-the-la...
Where the Language Changes
‘I am on the hunt for the Russian Empire, or what traces might still exist of its colonial enterprise.’ Bathsheba Demuth travels the Yukon river, following the history of the fur trade and the Nulato ...
granta.com
“I heard her say, ‘The love is there. The love is there. The love is there. Babe, the love is there. The love is there. The love is there.’” - Laureli Ivanoff
High Country News@highcountrynews.org · 7mo agoAt the turning of a season, a writer finds a sense of possibility.
I feel like this is the nightmare we all dread in the US — an active shooter in your community. Brown University is still in shelter in place 3 hours in, with 2 confirmed deaths, 8 in critical condition, and no shooter(s) in custody. One of my students had to run from the scene. Horrified.
Thank you for all the suggestions in the replies! It’s really expanded this syllabus-in-progress
Bathsheba Demuth@brdemuth.bsky.social · 8mo agoFavorite recent or classic readings on the history of environmental movements, 19th and 20th C? This is for a senior seminar, US and Europe as geographical focus #envhist
"Rivers are messy: Beyond the water bias in research and management" — A new article co-authored by @brdemuth.bsky.social combines historical and natural science ways of thinking about rivers to argue for the importance of understanding them as more than simply channels of water.
Rivers are messy: Beyond the water bias in research and management
This article reviews current trends in interdisciplinary river research to argue that a “water bias” or tendency consider rivers as synonymous with water can hinder our understanding of rivers and con...
journals.plos.org
Favorite recent or classic readings on the history of environmental movements, 19th and 20th C? This is for a senior seminar, US and Europe as geographical focus #envhist
