Grasping Soil

Name: Grasping Soil
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ISBN: 9781917813020

A Syllabus and Essays for The Environmental Humanities

Emily Brownell

$85.95 $73.44

Paperback

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English

White Horse Press
02 March 2026

Biodiversity; Management of land & natural resources

Soil is a nearly ubiquitous presence in our lives, regardless of whether we spend much time noticing it. Soil holds worlds within itself and also builds other worlds; it devours and remakes things; it sustains life and gives cover to the dead. Grasping Soil is a collectively-authored syllabus and series of essays, all examining, with different inflections, the fundamental question: what comes into view when we ‘grasp’ soil as a vessel of human history and point of view for inquiry?

Part I is an interdisciplinary syllabus that traces the contours of a growing body of work in the humanities that uses soil as a bridge between human and more-than-human histories. The syllabus offers a template of readings, discussion questions and assignments with an accompanying website for easy access to the supporting materials. The essays that follow in Part 2 explore particular moments and locations in which communities have modified, depleted or remade soil to suit a particular need. In examining these engagements with soil, each essay provides a particular view on the social, political or economic conditions that they reflect and create. The essays range from mountain top mining in Appalachia to the construction of a load-bearing monolith in Nazi-era Berlin, and the layered, residual histories of agricultural projects in Tanzania. As these essays make clear, soil is a lively presence not an inert recipient of human desires and actions. It is a living and not always governable community with ever-changing stories to tell.

Edited by: Emily Brownell
Imprint: White Horse Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781917813020
ISBN 10: 1917813023
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 02 March 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Emily Brownell is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental History at the University of Edinburgh. Her current project, Stories from the Substrate, considers twentieth-century East African history through a variety of interventions with, and extractions from, the soil.

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Grasping Soil

A Syllabus and Essays for The Environmental Humanities

Emily Brownell

$85.95 $73.44

Paperback

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