After Ice. Cold Humanities for a Warming Planet edited by Rafico Ruiz, Paula Shonach and Rob Shields (UBC Press 2024). Available from UBC Press and Amazon.
We’re delighted the announce the publication of After Ice, our meditation on the role of a ‘cold humanities’ in understanding climate warming.
As the climate warms and the hydrological cycle is disrupted, ice is no longer a reliable feature of higher latitudes or winter seasons. What are the human and nonhuman consequences of the planet’s waning capacity to cool? In other words, what comes after ice?
This collection examines the implications of the end of consistent freezing and thawing cycles. The cryosphere traditionally refers to areas where water is solid, such as places on the planet of snow, ice, and permafrost. Today, a new cryosphere is emerging that encompasses experiences generated by the uncertain horizons of melting ice, and whose future is increasingly determined by human behaviour. In this context, After Ice gathers experts in a wide range of disciplines – environmental history, game studies, Indigenous studies – to articulate aspects of the cold humanities. They investigate ice and its dynamic properties as a foundational element of Indigenous communities in the Arctic, as a commodity with technological and political value, and as a reflection of environmental change and the passage of time. We envision ice not only as a phase of water but also as a milieu for semantic and embodied sensemaking. It asks us to consider how to define, describe, and materially characterize our warming world.
RELATED TOPICS:Climate Change, Cultural Studies, Environmental History, Environmental Studies, History, Northern Studies, Water