At Home in the Anthropocene

“Propen weaves simple yet profound personal anecdotes throughout her analyses, from detailed narrations of her daily nature walks to insider knowledge of the ‘baby bird room’ at the wildlife sanctuary. … [While] there is clearly much work to be done in terms of (re)making home in the Anthropocene, Propen has given us both the motivation and a roadmap for doing it.” —Nicole Seymour, Ecocene

“I see Propen’s treatise as required reading for town planners, conservationists, developers, and residents … Her narrative models how to hold critical conversations and to share the actionable practices for a variety of readers. … Finally, this collection instills the value of interdisciplinary approaches in environmental studies and conveys an urgency for a cultural shift to connect with ‘wildness’ through compassionate conservation and thoughtful sustainability.” —Pamela J. Rader, Rocky Mountain Review

“Propen articulates perspectives on conservation and the environment that are likely to be novel to many readers. This would be a valuable resource to include in environmental studies courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as for general readers interested in nature and the environment. … Highly recommended.” —A.L. Mayer, CHOICE Reviews

“At Home in the Anthropocene is a compellingly written and thoroughly researched investigation into a multispecies understanding of ‘home’ in our current epoch. With its informative, accessible prose, it is suitable to general readers interested in the environment and sustainability as well as graduate seminar students.” —Emily Plec, author of Perspectives on Human-Animal Communication: Internatural Communication

At Home in the Anthropocene brings together a set of wildlife stories focused on the question of what counts as “home” in an age of climate crisis and upheaval. Through stories of mountain lions displaced by wildfires, encounters with black bears in areas of significant human use, wildlife rehabilitation practices, and of the creation of wildlife corridors, Amy D. Propen highlights posthuman interventions into the lives of these at-risk species, with a focus on how such interventions call into question ideas about coexisting with our vulnerable, more-than-human kin.

By employing the tenets of posthumanism, compassionate conservation, and entangled empathy—and making them accessible through storytelling and narrative—Propen offers new perspectives about how to more compassionately and productively understand ideas about home, connectivity, and coexistence across a range of places and ecosystems. Uniquely conceptualized to include narrative related to the Anthropause, as well as travel and nature writing amidst COVID-19, At Home in the Anthropocene engages with questions about home and belonging in generative ways that attempt to open up possibilities for sustainable futures in which we may productively coexist with our more-than-human kin.

Amy D. Propen is Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Visualizing Posthuman Conservation in the Age of the Anthropocene.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1        What Counts as Home in the Anthropocene?

Chapter 2        Fire-Lost and Trying to Cross

Interlude I       From Climate Anxiety Emerges the Gift of a Whisper Song

Chapter 3        Storied Places and Species in Flux: Connectivity as Reciprocity

Interlude II      Fostering a Culture of Reciprocity during the Anthropause

Chapter 4        At Home with Big Kin

Chapter 5        Gratitude for the Trail and the Gift of Roadside Geology

Notes

Bibliography

Index