Using Ibsen to supplement ice core data
March 23, 2006 2:36 PM   Subscribe

I've recently been studying how humans interact with their environments by studying ice cores, sediments, and other such things. I'm interested in supplementing this research by looking at how literature from the same time and place represents humans interaction with the environment. Anybody know any journals, books, etc. that deal with this sort of work?

To be more specific, I might draw relationships between the ice core data from late 19th century Norway and ecological representations in Ibsen (although I am concerned that he was writing from elsewhere in Europe). Any advice or commentary is welcome.
posted by eighth_excerpt to Science & Nature (2 answers total)
 
Check out Bill Ruddiman's book: Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum : How Humans Took Control of Climate. I haven't read it but I recently saw him speak and, if the book is any thing like his talks, it'll be great. He takes a look at climate change and tries to link historical significant anthropogenic events to changes in climate.
posted by kechi at 4:19 PM on March 23, 2006


Best answer: I'm a geographer, and we're always doing research on this sort of thing.

Key journals:
- Annals of the Association of American Geographers
- Professional Geographer
- Geoderma (a soil-science journal)

One neat read is '1491' by Charles Mann which is about archeological and physical (i.e., landforms, soils, and sedimentary) evidence for widespread advanced settlement in the New World before 'discovery' - this book is based a lot on intial work by William Denavan and comes out of a big argument between Betty Meggars and a lot of other anthropologist/geographers.

Another interesting author from the historic perspective is George Perkins Marsh, who wrote 'Man and Nature'

I don't have any suggestions for Northern Europe specifically, but you might find some interesting concepts in these sources.

From a literary standpoint (again with Latin American focus) I think Susanna Hecht has a neat article about Euclides da Cunha and David Cleary wrote about "green eden and green hell" which is kind of interesting.
posted by sablazo at 9:30 AM on March 24, 2006


« Older Should I fly Lufthansa or Air France?   |   Why do they make these things so confusing? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.