{"id":6215,"date":"2025-11-05T17:26:28","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.whpress.co.uk\/publications\/?p=6215"},"modified":"2026-03-03T11:01:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T11:01:18","slug":"graspingsoil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whpress.co.uk\/publications\/2025\/11\/05\/graspingsoil\/","title":{"rendered":"Grasping Soil"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A Syllabus and Essays for The Environmental Humanities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Edited by Emily Brownell<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\"Book<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Order online<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Open Access PDF<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Open Access ePub<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Read at JSTOR \u2013 Coming Soon<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Project Website<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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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 <\/em>is a collectively-authored syllabus and series of essays, all examining, with different inflections, the fundamental question: what comes into view when we \u2018grasp\u2019 soil as a vessel of human history and point of view for inquiry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book is Open Access through the support of UKRI<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Editor:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

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

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CONTENTS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PART I: SYLLABUS <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soil as Substrate 
Cynthia Browne, Johannes Lehmann  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soil as Archive 
Amiel Bize, Seth Denizen, Jayson Maurice Porter<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soil as Health
Emily Brownell, Tamar Novick, Lulu Tessua <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soil as Belonging
Dotan Halevy, Basil Ibrahim, Paul Kurek, Steven Stoll <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Syllabus bibliography<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PART II: ESSAYS <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soil\u2019s Metabolisms<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the electron microscope, Lehmann Lab, Cornell University, New York: <\/strong>
Behaviour instead of Identity: Functional Complexity of Organic Matter as an Organising Principle in Soil Ecosystems
Johannes Lehmann<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

British Mandate Palestine: <\/strong>
\u201cThe Fertility of the Soil is in Your Hand\u201d: On Manure and the Colonial Roots and Branches of the Organic Movement 
Tamar Novick <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kwale District, Kenya:<\/strong>
Building Roads, Counting Worms: Soil as a Medium for Parasitic Relations
Emily Brownell <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residual Histories <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ring of Fire, Americas: <\/strong>
Arsenic Cycles through Racism and Empire 
Jayson Maurice Porter<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Appalachia, USA:<\/strong>
Mountains Become Wasteland 
Steven Stoll<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ndungu, Tanzania:<\/strong>
Knowing Soil as a Living Thing, Treating it as a Non-Living Body: Contradictory forms of Care
Lulu Tessua<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lusatia, Germany: <\/strong>
Punkt Null (Point Zero): An Ecological Substrate Begins Anew
Cynthia Browne<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Substrates and Belonging <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berlin, the Cosmos:<\/strong>
Blood over Soil? <\/em>Albert Speer\u2019s Heavy Load-Bearing Cylinder, Glacial Till, and Racial Terra Forming
Paul Kurek <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gaza Strip, Palestine:<\/strong>
Cultivating an Ancient Soil: Sub-dune Histories and Ecologies 
Dotan Halevy<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Publication date: 1 March 2026
ISBN 978-1-917813-02-0 (PB) \u00a330
eISBN 978-1-917813-03-7 (Open Access PDF)
eISBN 978-1-917813-09-9 (Open Access ePub)
DOI: 10.63308\/63897247289532.book<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


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