CHE - Center for Culture, History, and Environment

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CHE - Center for Culture, History, and Environment

CHE-Center for Culture, History, and Environment is a multidisciplinary research center at UW-Madison CHE is the proud sponsor of Edge Effects Magazine.

Website: EdgeEffects.net
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09/10/2026

“Saharanism furnishes a conceptual tool for understanding what happens in deserts and why these spaces, which represent 33% of the land area of planet Earth, are treated as a category separate from discourses about environmentalism, law, life, morality, and experimentation.”

What happens when we imagine the desert as empty? Today on Edge Effects, Gustavo Sanchez-Bachman talks with Brahim El Guabli about his book Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences. Their conversation explores “Saharanism” and the people and ecologies obscured by dominant desert imaginaries.

Read more: https://edgeeffects.net/saharanism-and-the-myth-of-the-empty-desert-five-questions-for-brahim-el-guabli/

09/03/2026

“Together this list suggests that the 'weird' offers a useful mode of ecological attention—a way of noticing forms of agency, contradictions, and unlikely interdependencies with the more-than-human world. But perhaps above all, the weird can remind us that art has long made visible our enmeshment in larger, living systems no matter how strange those environments may be.”

Today on Edge Effects, faculty across academic disciplines recommend books, songs, and films that explore the polluted, uncanny, planetary, satirical, and otherwise non-normative dimensions of what we’re calling the “ecological weird.”

Read more: https://edgeeffects.net/faculty-favorites-encountering-the-ecological-weird/

09/01/2026

“Mientras la expansión colonial avanzaba sobre nuevos territorios considerados ‘exóticos,’ la búsqueda de especímenes tropicales y subtropicales aumentaba en respuesta a la demanda de productos imperiales en la propia Europa.”

Hoy en Translation Tuesday: Siguiendo el rastro de las orquídeas en Cosecha de huesos, una novela de Edwidge Danticat, se revelan complejas tramas de cuidado, violencia y el poder perdurable de la imaginación colonial.

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“As colonial expansion continued to open up exotic locations, the hunt for rare tropical and subtropical specimens escalated in response to the appetite for imperial products at home in Europe.”

Today on Translation Tuesday: Following orchids in The Farming of Bones, a novel by Edwidge Danticat, exposes tangled webs of care, violence, and the lasting power of the colonial imagination.

Leer más | Read more: https://edgeeffects.net/detras-de-la-belleza-de-las-orquideas-siglos-de-violencia/

07/30/2026

“If we take the idea of normal accidents seriously, derailment represents a probable outcome of the system operating as intended.”

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

Read more: https://edgeeffects.net/is-the-disaster-in-east-palestine-ohio-a-new-normal/

07/28/2026

“Part of doing interdisciplinary work for me is also about undisciplining your mind. Now I’ve spent so much time in feminist studies, but my biological training runs very deep. Part of interdisciplinary work is also letting your imagination run wild to ask: How are we where we are? How else might we study?”

Laleh Ahmad speaks with Banu Subramaniam about her recent book Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism. This week's installment of Edge Effects' Botanical Imagination series explores how colonialism shaped botany and considers how we might imagine alternative futures.

Read/listen: https://edgeeffects.net/banu-subramaniam/

07/21/2026

“From the perspective of a farmer, the first step to heal the earth is to humbly admit that we humans do not have the exclusivity of language, and that our language of words is not superior to the silent language of the world.”

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.

Read more: https://edgeeffects.net/translation-agroforestry-and-the-language-of-plants/

07/16/2026

“Maíz is far more than a material or a medium in my work. It is an ancestor, a kin, a site of historical trauma, a template for q***r survival. But also, it is the way that plants and humans learned to talk to each other and come together.”

Artist Vick Quezada and evolutionary biologist Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra both center maíz in their work despite their very different approaches. Together with M. Hamilton, these scholars join Edge Effects's Botanical Imagination series to explore the co-evolution of humans and maiz (corn), through the lens of cultural history, art and performance, science, and language.

Read/listen: https://edgeeffects.net/quezada-ross-ibarra/

07/14/2026

“Even though the shipbreaking industry contributes to Bangladesh’s economic prosperity, it reproduces colonial logics through extraction and cost externalization. Sitakunda is an example of a so-called "sacrifice zone" where labor, ecologies, humans, and more-than-humans are rendered expendable.”

The shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh is often hailed as an economic success story. Today in Edge Effects, Md. Borhan Uddin and Kimberley Thomas explain why this destructive industry is, in fact, an extension of colonial logics.

Read more: https://edgeeffects.net/the-colonial-costs-of-shipbreaking/

07/09/2026

“For some, the dancehall may not be the ideal place to confront both narratives of land and human exploitation and alternative agricultural practices; for others it is empowering to be reminded of such significant histories while dancing in community with fellow reggae listeners.”

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

Read more: https://edgeeffects.net/reggaes-agrarian-resistance/

07/07/2026

“Los trabajadores agrícolas migrantes son vulnerables, y el riesgo tóxico al que están expuestos es desproporcionado e inmoral. ¿Podemos tener un sistema alimentario sin estos costos?”

Estados Unidos tiene una larga historia de explotación de los trabajadores agrícolas, especialmente de grupos ya marginados. Hoy en Translation Tuesday, 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.

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"Migrant farmworkers are vulnerable, and their toxicity risk is inordinate and immoral. Can we have a food system without these costs?”

The U.S. has a long history of farmworker exploitation, especially among already marginalized groups. Today on Translation Tuesday, Micaela Edelson reveals the often hidden health costs of pesticide exposure to migrant farmworkers in the United States.

Leer más | Read more: https://edgeeffects.net/el-contrato-quimico/

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Madison, WI
53706

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https://che.nelson.wisc.edu/

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