Shocking events like the 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, often get framed as just that–shocking. Alex George and Kimberley Thomas reframe the incident around normal accident theory to emphasize the structural problems at the heart of the train industry. 🚂❗

Is the Disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, a New Normal? - Edge Effects

Centered on the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, this essay considers how accident theory changes understandings of tragic events.

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On today’s Edge Effects Botanical Imagination series, Laleh Ahmad speaks with Banu Subramaniam about her recent book, Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism. Their conversation examines how colonialism shaped botany and considers how we might imagine otherwise. 🌱⛵

Botany's Colonial Present and Alternative Futures: A Conversation with Banu Subramaniam - Edge Effects

Banu Subramaniam discusses her most recent book, Botany of Empire: Plants Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism.

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Today in Edge Effects' Botanical Imagination series, Alizée Armet asks what happens when we stop trying to interpret plants and fungi as if they were speaking our language. Through three art installations, she explores how humans, organisms, and technology challenge human ideas of communication. 🤖🍄

Technological Mediations for Interspecies Communication  - Edge Effects

A series of art installations explores how plants, fungi, and technology form relationships that challenge human ideas of communication.

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At first glance, language and restorative agriculture may seem unrelated. Today in Edge Effects's Botanical Imagination series, Lia A. Miranda de Lima and Lucas Sigefredo combine expertise in translation studies and agroforestry to uncover ways of thinking about the language of plants. 🌳🇧🇷

Translation, Agroforestry, and the Language of Plants - Edge Effects

Agroforestry and translation share ideas of hospitality helpful for appreciating the entanglements of human and more-than-human languages.

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Artist Vick Quezada and evolutionary biologist Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra join M. Hamilton for Edge Effects' Botanical Imagination series to explore the co-evolution of humans and maíz (corn) through the lenses of cultural history, art and performance, science, and language. 🌽🎙️

Thinking with Maíz: A Conversation with Vick Quezada and Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra - Edge Effects

Vick Quezada and Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra discuss the co-evolution of humans and maiz through the lens of cultural history, art, and science.

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The shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh is often hailed as an economic success story. But national development only shows part of the picture. Today in Edge Effects, Md. Borhan Uddin and Kimberley Thomas explain how this industry acts as an extension of colonial logics. 🚢 🇧🇩

The Colonial Costs of Shipbreaking - Edge Effects

The shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh extends colonial logics that harm local farmlands, people, and ecologies.

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The plantation histories and logics carried through roots reggae music inspired Carmen Andall‑Woodroofe to pursue a Ph.D. Today in the Botanical Imagination series, Andall-Woodroofe centers roots reggae music to examine plantation futures—and the ways reggae resists them. 🇯🇲🎵

Reggae's Agrarian Resistance - Edge Effects

Roots reggae artists make plantation futures audible by centering historical themes of exploitation that map onto the present.

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Estados Unidos tiene una larga historia de explotación de los trabajadores agrícolas, especialmente de grupos ya marginados. Micaela Edelson revela los costos para la salud—a menudo ocultos—que conlleva la exposición a pesticidas para los trabajadores agrícolas migrantes en Estados Unidos. 🍅🚜

La exposición a pesticidas pone en riesgo a los trabajadores agrícolas migrantes.

Micaela Edelson revela los costos para la salud —a menudo ocultos— de la exposición a pesticidas en Estados Unidos, y no se trata de lo que ocurre en el supermercado.

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M. Hamilton and Ellie Kincaid talk plants with Professor of Philosophy, Michael Marder. Today in the Botanical Imagination series, Marder invites readers to consider plants as active participants in thought and world‑making. 📚 🍃

Botanical Imaginations: Michael Marder Discusses Plant-Thinking

Michael Marder talks about plant-thinking, the concept of "edges," and the work of the environmental humanities.

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In the abandoned, deindustrialized interstices of Brussels, feral wetlands flourish. Today in the Botanical Imagination series, Louise Bazelaire explores the history and politics of these liminal spaces through a plant that is loved and hated in equal measure: Japanese knotweed. 🌱💦

Learning from Japanese Knotweed in Brussels's Feral Wetlands - Edge Effects

In Brussel's abandoned industrial sites, the invasive plant Japanese knotweed embodies the emergence of feral wetlands.

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When Tiffany VanWinkoop looked through letters between Constantine VII and his friend, she was surprised to read erotic requests for and descriptions of lettuce. Today in the Botanical Imagination series: Might lettuce be a tenth century equivalent of the contemporary eggplant and peach emoji? 🍆🥬

The Tenth Century Equivalent of 🍑 🍆? 🥬. - Edge Effects

Much like contemporary emojis, lettuce in the tenth century serves as a form of symbolic intimacy between Constantine VII and his friend.

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When Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia visited Kew Gardens, he was struck by how ferns seemed to be valued there for their aesthetics alone. Today in Botanical Imaginations series, Bhutia discusses how fern relations in the Sikkim Himalayas are as abundant as ferns themselves. 🌿 🇮🇳

Fronds of Knowledge in the Sikkim Himalayas

In the Sikkim Himalayas, ferns are as abundant as ways of knowing them. Local communities know them as agents and co-residents of the land.

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From sugarcane plantations to broken electricity poles, Bad Bunny presented and protested the historical and lived realities of Puerto Rico during this year's Super Bowl. Today in the Botanical Imaginations series, Isaac Salazar takes a closer look at his botanical aesthetic. 🐰 🇵🇷

Bad Bunny's Botanical, Eco-Rasquache Aesthetic - Edge Effects

Bad Bunny's agricultural imagery and eco-rasquache aesthetic reflects and protests historical and lived realities of Puerto Rico.

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Finally, a piece on Bad Bunny + botany / environment / empire! This whole @edgeeffectsmag.bsky.social Botanical Imaginations series is fantastic, and this is no exception. edgeeffects.net/bad-bunny/

Bad Bunny's Botanical, Eco-Rasquache Aesthetic - Edge Effects

Bad Bunny's agricultural imagery and eco-rasquache aesthetic reflects and protests historical and lived realities of Puerto Rico.

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Today on the Edge Effects podcast, @thebexxx.bsky.social speaks with Jim Endersby about his new book, The Arrival of the Fittest: Biology's Imaginary Futures, 1900-1935 (@uchicagopress.bsky.social). They talk about plants, biotopia, and the politics of expertise from the 20th c to today. 🪴 🔬

Jim Endersby on Biotopia, American Imperialism, and Science

Jim Endersby talks about the relationship between plants, science, expertise, and imperialism in his book The Arrival of the Fittest.

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Colonial and imperial powers have long sought to bring order to unruly, wetland ecosystems. Today in the Botanical Imaginations series, Iliana Capozzoli traces these histories around the world and how mangroves fight back. 🌴📍

Mangroves and the (Un)Making of Imperial Borders - Edge Effects

As living testament to the fluidity of borders, wetlands confound administrative, imperial rule. They resist empire.

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In Colombia, women and children perform(ed) the necessary labor to sustain the toxic production of tobacco. Today in the Botanical Imaginations series, Nicolás Felipe Rueda Rey and Margarita Martínez-Osorio trace these histories of care and toxicity to ask what accountability looks like today. 🚬 🇨🇴

Caring for Toxic Tobacco Cultivation in Colombia - Edge Effects

Campesinas in Colombia have been exposed to toxic chemicals while providing critical labor and care work for the tobacco industry.

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La novela decimonónica Flatland, de Edwin A. Abbott, suele describirse como una obra de ciencia ficción (o ficción matemática). Hoy en Translation Tuesday, Valeria Zambianchi sostiene que también puede leerse como ficción climática. 🟨 🟣 ¡Gracias, S. D. ‘Sabrì’ Hodell, por esta traducción!

La emergencia climática a través imaginarios multidimensional de Flatland

Flatland como ficción climática y sostiene que las posibilidades de transformación del futuro ya están presentes en nuestro mundo.

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Had a fun interview today for @edgeeffectsmag.bsky.social podcast talking with @itsmehamilton.bsky.social and @vickquezada.bsky.social about the dialog between people and maize. Keep an eye out for it!

Records of Tree Day ceremonies in Brazil’s public archives of the 20th c belie a mass felling of native trees over the same period. Today in the Botanical Imaginations series, the Bárbara Lissa Campos and Maria Vaz recraft the archive's narrative through their art: Cidade-Jardem, or Garden City. 🌳 📷

Recrafting the Brazilian Arboreal Archive - Edge Effects

Garden City, a collaborative artwork, combines archival photographs and speculative fabulation to recraft the history of Brazil's Tree Day

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Today in the Botanical Imaginations series, Isabelle Gapp talks with artist Zachari Logan about his residency at Kinngait Studios. They discuss Logan's method of "queer rewilding" and how his experience of the tundra and embodied familiarity with its plants inspired his artwork. 🌱 🎨

The Art of Arctic Plants: A Conversation with Zachari Logan - Edge Effects

Zachari Logan's drawings and sculptures of arctic plant life depict a queer rewilding of icescapes and human relationship to plants and ice.

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Today on the Edge Effects podcast, Trish Fisher talks with Sonja Trom Eayrs about her book: Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America (@univnebpress.bsky.social). Sonja's local fight against CAFOs sheds light on the corporate takeover of rural America. 🐖 💰

The Big Pig Pyramid: A Conversation with Sonja Trom Eayrs

Sonja Trom Eayrs discusses factory farming, rural politics, and Big Ag’s influence on communities and the environment in the American Midwest.

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Histories of capitalism tend to be phallocentric and anthropocentric. In her new book, Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary (@dukepress.bsky.social), @lclaberge.bsky.social provides a fabulously feline rendition. Today on Edge Effects, Margaryta Golovchenko & Marta Wolny share their reviews. 🐈‍⬛ 🦁

Lions and Tigers and Tabbies, Oh My! Two Reviews of La Berge's Marx for Cats - Edge Effects

Margaryta Golovchenko and Marta Wolny review Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary by Leigh Claire La Berge (Duke University Press, 2023).

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Today in the Botanical Imaginations series, Tatsiana Shchurko follows potatoes through personal memories and uneven global histories. From the Andes to Belarus, she traces how the potato mediates imperial power while fueling peasant resistance and sustaining everyday life. 🥔 🇧🇾

Tuberous Entanglements and the Potato Empire - Edge Effects

Potatoes are living archives of extraction, adaptation, and care. Their presence in the kitchen anchors these histories in everyday life.

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Today in the Botanical Imaginations series, mixed media artist Alex Côté Hallé combines performance, land art, and ecological research to transform polluted landscapes into sites of care and imagination, producing sculptures, videos, and installations with human and nonhuman collaborators. 🗑️ 🎨

Contaminated Art on the Plastic Archipelago - Edge Effects

Where the bacterial meets the queer, where performance meets plastic, Alex Côté Hallé describes his relational approach to art.

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Hoje no Translation Tuesday, Mariana Sarkis Olson traduz o guia de @mcolon.bsky.social sobre o impacto duradouro de Henry Ford na Amazônia. Colón compartilha as histórias inéditas de violência, poluição e ativismo que descobriu enquanto filmava seu novo documentário, #BeyondFordlândia. 🇧🇷 🚜

Por que o fracasso de Henry Ford no Brasil ainda importa hoje

Marcos Colón compartilha as histórias inéditas de violência, poluição e ativismo que descobriu enquanto filmava seu novo documentário, Beyond Fordlândia.

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Today on Edge Effects, Andrea Natan Feltrin reflects on their relations to the beyond-human world as a queer and neurodivergent person. In the Italian Alps they lived in and beyond, queer ecology provides radical ways to rethink environmental governance and more-than-human kinship. 🏳️‍🌈 👓

Wild, Queer Kinship - Edge Effects

Andrea Natan Feltrin always felt they attuned to the rhythms of the natural world differently than others. Queer ecology provided a language for these intuitions.

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Today on the Edge Effects podcast, Kayleigh Lobdell talks with Jennifer Case and Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder about their recent books and the radical potential of human and beyond-human mothering in this political and ecological era 👨‍👧 🥰

A Conversation with Jennifer Case and Chelse Steinauer-Scudder

Jennifer Case and Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder talk about their recent books about mothering in this era of political and climate crisis.

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Today in the Botanical Imaginations series, Émilie Gervais peers through a fence around a community garden at the height of winter. The cold weather changes the sensory landscape - our perceptions and the stories we tell. A beautiful ode to seasonality, just in time for our Midwest spring ❄️ 👩‍🌾

Winter's Muted Garden - Edge Effects

What does a garden become in winter? Seasonal change and cultural expectations shape what we notice and what we learn to recognize as life.

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Today in our Botanical Imaginations series, @thebexxx.bsky.social and Emily Burke dig into the historical roots of two regulars in U.S. Catholic churches: the poinsettia and the Easter lily. The geopolitical history that made these plants "Catholic" enshrines colonialism in tradition. ⛪ 🌹

The Colonial Roots of Catholic Plants - Edge Effects

Catholic holiday plants enshrine colonialism as Catholic tradition in the U.S. Through the poinsettia and Easter lily, capitalism reigns.

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