Grasping Soil: A Syllabus and Essays for The Environmental Humanities

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 is a collectively-authored syllabus and series of essays, all examining, with different inflections, the fundamental question: what comes into view when we ‘grasp’ soil as a vessel of human history and point of view for inquiry?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 eng