Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
Curated by Eiko Honda, Global Studies, Aarhus University.
This thematic collection features articles on events in environmental history understood through a multispecies intellectual history perspective. While the turn towards the more-than-human has been a strong presence in disciplines like geography, anthropology, and literary studies for close to a decade, it has received little recognition by intellectual historians with a few, notable exceptions. In this light, the new field of multispecies intellectual history (MIH), proposed by the project Unearthing Multispecies Intellectual History, challenges the foundation of “intellectual” history. That is, the assumed superiority of the autonomous human mind and its ability to reason on its own.
The collection is created in collaboration with Rithma Kreie Engelbreth Larsen (Intellectual History, Aarhus University), Jeremy Farr (Archaeology, University of Queensland), Diego Molina (Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London), Sonia Contera (Physics, University of Oxford), Hatib Abdul Kadir (Global Studies, Aarhus University), Ryan Mealiffe (Medieval History, University of Oxford), Aike Peter Rots (Japanese studies and religious studies, University of Oslo), and Toshiaki Hicosaka (Art and Child Studies, Kyoto University of the Arts).
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Honda, E. “Minakata Kumagusu and the Microbial Turn in Theories of Evolution and Civilisation, 1887–1892.” In Konishi, S., Bremner, L., and Dotulong, M. (eds.), Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Modern Japan and the Wider World (Leiden: Brill, 2024), 87–112.
Honda, E. “Minakata Kumagusu and the Emergence of Queer Nature: The Civilisation Theory, Buddhist Science and Microbes, 1887–1892.” Modern Asian Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Power, A., Peša, I., and Honda, E. “Undoing the Discipline: History in the Time of Climate Crisis and COVID-19.” Journal for the History of Environment and Society (Ghent: Brepols, 2020).
Contera, S. Seis problemas que la ciencia no puede resolver/Six problems that science cannot solve (Barcelona: Arpa Editores, 2025).
Molina, D. Planting a City in the Tropical Andes. Plants and People in Bogotá, 1880 to 1920 (New York: Routledge, 2024). Research on Gardens in History Series. ISBN: 978-1-032-07656-0.
Farr, J., and de la Luna, K. “How Insects Might Have Mediated Human Mobilities and the Intensification of Food Production in the Zambezian Bioregion of South Central Africa in the First and Second Millennium CE.” Cambridge Archaeological Review 29(1) (June 2024). arc.soc.srcf.net/issues/39-1.
Hicosaka, T. “A Preliminary Study on the Relationship Between Young Children and Figurative Language.” Art and Child Studies vol. 6, Kyoto University of the Arts, 2025.
Hicosaka, T. “Design of an incomplete environment.” Art and Child Studies vol. 5, Kyoto University of the Arts, 2024.
Palmblad, J. “Instrumentalidad y personalidad ecológica: ¿Con qué finalidad?” Papeles de Relaciones Ecosociales y Cambio Global 171 (2025): 111–22.
Molina, D. “Secularise to conserve: the history of the wax palm in Colombia.” Plant Perspectives (November 2024). doi.org/10.3197/WHPPP.63845494909745.
Larsen, R. K. E. “Et manifest for strategisk posthumanisme.” In Dias, T., & Willert, K. B. (eds.), En anden økologi: Antikapitalistisk håndbog (Aarhus: Antipyrine, 2025), 339–354.
Larsen, R. K. E. “Bør vi insistere på det særegne menneske? En dekolonial intervention.” In Jordskred: Bidrag til den nye naturtænkning (Copenhagen: Multivers, 2024), 16–41.
Molina, D. “Around and inside gardens. Historical relationships between light, people and plants in Bogotá.” In Meiller, V., & Mertehikian, L. (eds.), Unpredictable Architectures: The Politics of Gardening in Latin America (Leiden: Brill, 2025).
Parikka, J. “Multispecies Sensing,” Environmental Humanities Glossary, University of Copenhagen. artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/research/art-and-earth/environmental-humanities-glossary/multispecies-sensing/.
Kadir, H. A. “Freshwater Fish Invasion as Deliberate Neglect: Unpacking Multispecies Colonialism in West Papua.” Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History (Autumn 2025), no. 10. Munich: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. www.environmentandsociety.org/node/10025.
Kadir, H. A. “Recurrent Frontiers: Land Dispossession, Illegal Resource Extraction and Environmental Degradation in Sorong, West Papua.” International Quarterly for Asian Studies 55(2) (2024), 197–218. doi.org/10.11588/iqas.2024.2.24647.
Kadir, H. A. “Multispecies marginality: Mangroves and migrant Papuans in the margins of urban colonisation.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 34(2) (2023), 59–75. doi.org/10.1111/taja.12477.
