About the Journal
Please note that this is an archive. The official publication you will find on this page.
Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review is an open-access online publication for peer-reviewed articles, creative nonfiction, and artistic contributions that showcase the work of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) and its community across the world. In the spirit of Rachel Carson, it publishes sharp writing with an impact. Surveying the interrelationship between environmental and social changes from a wealth of disciplines and perspectives, it is a place to share rigorous research, test out fresh ideas, question old ones, and to advance public and scholarly debates in the environmental humanities and beyond.
Published biannually, Springs features a range of content, from text and photography to audio and video. It also brings together writing from other Rachel Carson Center publications. The Springs archive curates articles that were originally published in the open-access online and print journal RCC Perspectives (2010–2020), in the Rachel Carson Center blog Seeing the Woods (2012–2021), and in the peer-reviewed online journal Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History.
Springs launched in 2022 as part of a Kolleg-Project funded by the Federal Ministry of Research and Education (Käte Hamburger Kolleg). The project is run by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC).
How do I contribute to Springs?
Currently, submissions to Springs are by invitation only. For open calls check the RCC's other publishing platform Arcadia. Anyone may submit to Arcadia; please visit this page to read the guidelines.
Unless otherwise stated, Springs articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
With any questions, please email the editorial team at editors@rcc.lmu.de.
Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review – ISSN 2751-9317
Current Issue
How does environmental change impact language? Who handles our old phones, our discarded clothes? And is anthropocentrism really at the root of the environmental crisis? The ninth issue of Springs offers a dialogue on human nature and the origins of environmental degradation, taking inspiration from tradition and Indigenous practices. In “The Inhuman Condition,” Jonatan Palmblad questions whether anthropocentrism is truly driving the ecological crisis, proposing that socioecological justice can only be achieved by embracing human nature. Jake Goetz’ poem “Der Bartgeier“ is an homage to the bone-eating Alpine bird, who was hunted to extinction in the early twentieth century and reintroduced to the Alps in the 1980s. In “Recycling Cultures in India,” Anwesha Borthakur finds that traditional methods of handling recyclables in the country largely persist. With serious laughs, Rowan Deer’s “How We Got Here” narrates a brief history of the universe, as related by someone older and wiser than all of it. In “Growing Up amid Environmental Change,” Jan David Hauck and Pooja Nayak examine how transformations in subsistence practices shape conceptions of morality and human well-being. “Making Bourdélots and Tasting Terroir” by Rory Hill reflects on how Jersey’s apple products might continue to resonate even after most of the orchards have disappeared from the island.
