Vol. 27, No. 1: Human/Nature

Vol. 27, No. 1: Human/Nature

From vanishing coastlines in the Carolinas to the toxic legacies of coal ash, and from reclamations of Indigenous histories in Louisiana to Black radical environmentalism in the Tidewater, meet the Human/Nature issue of Southern Cultures. As guest editor Andy Horowitz writes, this issue “advocates for a humane vision of how people live in and with the world around them—a view of the environment as, at once, a material landscape that crunches under foot and burns on the skin, and an intellectual terrain, where ideas about place inform people’s views of the world.”

Front Porch: Human/Nature

by Marcie Cohen Ferris

“I am struck by the deeply physical and emotional engagement with landscape that these scholars, writers, and artists reveal.”

A Humane Vision

by Andy Horowitz

"Whatever purpose the distinctions between humans and nature once served, humancan no longer signal a disembodied force of psychology, nor can naturebe tidily distinguished from the social construction of inequality.”

Snapshot: View from Quiet House, 2016

by Lisa McCarty

Black Mountain, North Carolina

Hunting Memories of the Grass Things

by Jeffery U. Darensbourg

“The last chance for an anecdote has passed. Not only have the wild bison of Louisiana walked on but pieces of us walked on with them.”

Snapshot: Yellow Finch, 2019

by Laura Saunders

Elliston, Virginia

In Search of Maudell Sleet’s Garden

by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore

“I’ve looked so long for Maudell Sleet because she did make a difference. She produced the beauty that inspired art.”

Snapshot: The Tea Room, Vizcaya, 2017

by Anastasia Samoylova

Miami, Florida

Malik Rahim’s Black Radical Environmentalism

by Joshua B. Guild

“It would be easy to dismiss Rahim’s dream as tragically naïve or unrealistic. But the long history of Black struggle invites, even requires, this kind of fantastical imagining.”

Snapshot: Haiku, 2019

by RaMell Ross

Hale County, Alabama

A Totally Different Form of Living

by Justin Hosbey, J.T. Roane

“‘I didn’t grow up with a disdain for free people of color, or for that area. But I grew up knowing that they wasn’t us.’”

Snapshot: Two Sides to Every Story, 2014

by Aaron Turner

Arlington, Tennessee

Louisiana Trail Riders

by Jeremiah Ariaz

“Though I had been to many festivals and parades in my eight years in Louisiana, this was a distinctly different affair.”

Snapshot: Water Treatment, 2020

by Monique Verdin

Bvlbancha: St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana

The Knife’s Edge of Ruin

by Madison W. Cates

“The past, present, and future of Hilton Head is indivisible from the African American lives and communities that have known and loved and labored on its land and waters.”

Snapshot: Jean Hooper, 2018

by Justin Cook

From "Tide and Time" | Salvo, North Carolina

Mulberry Season Again

by Lisa Sorg

“The predictable march into each season has lost its rhythm.”

Snapshot: Fish Display, 2014

by Richard Knox Robinson

Reedville, Virginia

Quicker than Coal Ash

by Will Warasila, Anne Branigin

“Further suffering is not inevitable.”

Snapshot: The Land, 2018

by Timothy Ivy

Thaxton, Mississippi

Me and Papa and Aldo Leopold

by Anna Zeide

“My dad had lived his life in such a way that he stuck out in nearly all settings, except in the forest.”

No Ark

by Nickole Brown

“I was walking—no, Mary, not through the woods / or along any breezy shore—but across the lot to the discount store.