Design Against Extinction
This article reviews the eco-social design work of students at the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at New York University over the last decade. Environmental justice movements and the effects of global warming pose significant challenges to the architecture of dwellings, landscapes, and urban design communities. In response, students have placed socially and ecologically sensitive projects at the center of their design education. The justifiable moral outrage of our students has prompted us and them to rethink the methods by which we teach and imagine social environmentalism from the perspective of equity, inclusion, and the biosphere.
“Design Against Extinction at New York University,” with Mitchell Joachim, Spool, 10:1 (2023), 121-132. [PDF]
Op-eds on the Oppenheimer film
“The stories ‘Oppenheimer’ didn’t tell” Washington Post, March 15, 2024. [PDF]
“Årets verste film” Klassekampen, March 13, 2024. [PDF]
My review of Green Development or Greenwashing?
Pál and Räsänen and Saikku, Green Development or Greenwashing? Environmental Histories of Finland, H-Environment, Dec. 2023. [PDF].
Cool Course: Walking New York City
A Gallatin first-year seminar explores the meaning and history of traveling on foot. Eileen Reynolds and Tracey Friedman write about my freshmen course on walking. NYU News, December 14, 2023.
Everett Mendelsohn: The Harvard Professor
“Everett Mendelsohn: The Harvard Professor,” Journal of the History of Biology, Nov. 21, 2023, 1-5.
In memory of my adviser, colleague, and friend, Everett Mendelsohn (1931-2023).
The Trail of Nuclear Suffering
“The Trail of Nuclear Suffering,” Network in Canadian History and Environment, August 8, 2023. [PDF]
In this blogpost I introduce my article “A History of Uranium Mining in Canada,” JAm It! 8 (2023), 5-23.
My review of Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity
Marion Grau, Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity: Reconstructing Sacred Geographies in Norway, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, June 2023, 326-327. [PDF]
My review of A New Ecological Order
Ştefan Dorondel and Stelu Şerban (eds.), A New Ecological Order. Development and the transformation of nature in Eastern Europe, Centaurus 65:1 (2023), 201-202. [PDF]
To Malta with love (but not for the cars)
“I have a simple message for my new Maltese friends: rethink your transportation policies by encouraging public transport, biking, scooters, and walking instead of cars.”
“To Malta with love (but not for the cars)“, The Times of Malta, June 20, 2023. [PDF]
A History of Uranium Mining in Canada
“A History of Uranium Mining in Canada,” JAm It! 8 (2023), 5-23. [PDF]
Abstract
The history of uranium mining on indigenous land in Canada is a story of settler colonialism, conflicts, and a clash of systems of belief. Pending whose knowledge you seek and which rationality you chose, it’s a history that entails both pessimistic and optimistic perspectives. The miners believed in a rationality of prosperity at the expense of the existing First Nation cultures. It’s a history of settler colonialism in which the process of conquest generated counterclaims of defeat. The ongoing clash between claims and counter-claims, prophecies and counter-prophecies, traditional and scientific knowledge, mark the history of Canadian mining along with the larger history of nuclear industries and weaponry. The Canadian uranium mines of the 1930s recuperated the first reactions to nuclear industries and disasters, but were also an early warning about what uranium-bearing minerals could do. That came in the form of what sounded like a mystical prophecy to Western ears, though to indigenous culture it was understood as medical advice. By untangling different rationalities for mining as well as a few early voices of resistance to it, the aim of this article is to uncover the origin and social dynamics of benefitting and suffering that came to mark a global crisis
Peder Anker 