New Books in Environmental Studies

Why has the Catholic Church in India become so engaged in environmental initiatives? And what does the wider Indian political context defined by an assertive Hindu nationalism mean for the ability of church actors to pursue environmental agendas? In this episode, we are joined by Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Nihar Gokhale who have examined these questions in the Indian state of Goa, focusing on church activities and outreach in the domain of sustainable agriculture and agroecology.

You can read more about their research on the relationship between Christian environmentalism, agroecology and the rise of Hindu majoritarianism in the edited volume Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia, published by Leiden University Press.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen is a Social Anthropologist at the University of Oslo in Norway.

Nihar Gokhale is a DPhil student in International Development at the Oxford Department of International Development.

Mette Halskov Hansen, your host, is a Professor of China Studies at the University of Oslo.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

1. A complete list of University of California Press journals is available at UC Press Journals

2. Clare E. B. Cannon; Advancing sustainable transitions: A spatial analysis of socio-environmental dynamics of landfills across the United States. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 12 January 2024; 12 (1): 00101: Link

3. Morrison, Matthew D. Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States. Oakland: University of California Press, 2024. Available at: UC Press Bookstore

4. Matthew D. Morrison; Race, Blacksound, and the (Re)Making of Musicological Discourse. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 December 2019; 72 (3): 781–823: Link

6. Jennifer Lynn Peterson; Scenes of Destruction and Beauty: Sponsored Film, Women Reformers, and the Save-the-Redwoods League. Feminist Media Histories 1 April 2023; 9 (2): 43–75: Link

If you are interested in supporting the work of UC Press and its Journals Program, please consider making a charitable donation to the UC Press Foundation. To learn more about the UC Press Foundation and how to contribute, please visit UC Press Website.

David Famiano is the Journals Director at the University of California Press

Jessica Chesnutt is the Journals Manager at the University of California Press.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Between the late 1940s and the end of the twentieth century, natural gas became Iran's bedrock energy source. Billed as a futuristic fuel for a future world power, gas became an avenue for the country's developmentalist ambitions. The ability to build technologically sophisticated infrastructures served as a powerful tool of state legitimation, both before and after the 1979 Revolution, and tied top-down politics of modernization to bottom-up feelings of national belonging. Accelerant: Energy Infrastructures and the Natural World in Making Modern Iran (Stanford UP, 2026) analyzes the interwoven histories of energy, development, and the environment inIran. Following the movement of natural gas from underground deposits, through infrastructures of refining and distribution, and into everyday life, Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani explores the roles of development planners, oil firms, industrialists, engineers, and consumers—as well as the mountain ranges, sedimentary rock, and natural gas itself—to show how natural gas emerged as a crucial enabler of industrialization and a strong impetus for resource nationalism. Tracing the transformation of gas from a waste product into a vital resource, this book offers a history of anticolonial developmentalism in Iran—revealing a key driver toward intensified energy use that suggests why and how societies in the Global South became voracious consumers of fossil fuel energy.

Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani is the Farhang Foundation Early Career Chair in Iranian Studies and Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California.Filippo De Chirico is a Ph.D. Candidate in Energy History at Roma Tre University. His research focuses on the history of the Italian natural gas sector.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

How can we study the late ancient and Byzantine history from ecological perspectives? How might one grapple with the more-than-human in sources and media created by humans? Exploring the diverse ways in which pre-modern texts engaged with the broader natural world, Ecologizing Late Ancient and Byzantine Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2025) presents scholarly ventures into the terrains of the past. From the ancient treatises on dreams to monastic tales from the Hexameron literature to the Byzantine romance, from the Exeter Book to a mysterious Byzantine icon, the chapters investigate a diverse range of literature and other sources, uncovering intricate ecosystems of relationships.

The team of leading international experts behind the volume focuses on encounters between human and more-than-human beings. They pay attention to the entanglement of multiple agencies that cut through texts and other meshes. With insights from such theoretical traditions as ecocriticism, new materialism and environmental humanities, they re-expose ancient media to the elements.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Laura Borghetti is a Doctoral Candidate in Byzantine Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany.

Thomas Arentzen is a Reader in Church History at Lund University, Sweden, and Associate Professor at Sankt Ignatios College, Stockholm School of Theology, Sweden.

Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Landscape architecture is at a crossroads. The ability to draw upon
interdisciplinary perspectives and generate insights from the combined
vantage points of design, environmental studies, and the social sciences
puts it in a prime position to address the most pressing issues of our
time, such as climate change and social inequality. Its current reliance
on digital and technological solutions, however, has increasingly
caused landscape architects to lose sight of the ways in which humans
actually use spaces. And while landscapes are designed all over the
world, the discipline remains inordinately centered on the Global North.
Dr. Gareth Doherty's Landscape Fieldwork: How Engaging the World Can Change Design (University of Virginia Press, 2025) alters
that long-standing paradigm through real-life examples that provide
tools for practitioners to engage more deeply with multidimensional,
diverse landscapes and the communities that create, live in, and use
them.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies