Previous articleNext article FreeNote from the EditorsStephen Brain, Catherine Dunlop, and Mark D. HerseyStephen Brain Search for more articles by this author , Catherine Dunlop Search for more articles by this author , and Mark D. Hersey Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe April 2022 issue, the second produced in partnership with the University of Chicago Press, highlights once again the vibrant efforts of scholars to better understand the historical relationship of humans with the nonhuman world. Its essays and features span the customary geographical and temporal diversity that readers of the journal have come to expect, but also include multiple works with challenging methodological approaches.The forum, for instance, “Extinction and Its Interventions in the Americas,” comprises essays written jointly by historians and scientists, in accordance with the organizers’ contention that interdisciplinary approaches help researchers to eliminate blind spots and yield better results. Just as provocative is the contribution by Andrew Flack, which asks the journal’s readers to consider (and surmount) the biases associated with visual ways of knowing the world, so central to the epistemology of environmental science in general. A different kind of methodological challenge is made in “‘Water Fit for a Christian Woman’: The Gendered and Racial Politics of Water in the Wash, 1865–1921,” in which Alexandra Straub calls attention to the neglected connection between environmental knowledge and the lived experiences of household laborers. Similarly, Michael E. Staub shows how researchers can find insights into prevailing environmental attitudes in unexpected places like military press releases and public health reports. Yet another example of a methodological innovation can be found in Kara Murphy Schlichting’s Gallery essay, “Hot Town: Sensing Heat in Summertime Manhattan,” which analyzes historic paintings and photographs from New York City in order to better understand the elusive but critical concept of a “heatscape.”The book review section, much slimmer than usual due to technical issues related to the transition in editors and presses and compounded by COVID-19, features a review essay by Susan Nance about animals in environmental history, as well as a sampling of the most recent environmental history scholarship. With the new editorial team in place and the new platform fully operational, we anticipate the book review section to return to its former size by the end of 2022.Although we are penning this editorial note in early January 2022—in the midst of the peak Omicron wave—we see bright glimmers of hope on the horizon. Some of the brightest can be found in the fact that we continue to receive a large volume of submissions that reflect a wide array of interests, geographically, topically, and temporally. Our field has never been more diverse, and as this issue shows, there is much yet to be learned about the seemingly familiar—water, war, and darkness to name just three—for those willing to approach it with fresh eyes and in unexpected ways. We hope that readers will seize the opportunity to contribute their own work in this vein, work that encourages environmental historians to push beyond what we know (or think we know) about ostensibly familiar topics and thus think in fresh ways about the past. Our sincere hope is that each issue of the journal allows our readers to do just that. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 27, Number 2April 2022 Published for the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society Views: 609 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/718847 Views: 609 HistoryPublished online March 11, 2022 © 2022 Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental History. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.
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Oct 1, 2022
Venus Bivar 
Open Access
