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Author Spotlight

Josh Klemm

Josh Klemm is co-director of International Rivers.

Latest:

10 Reasons Why Hydropower Isn’t a Climate Solution

Thomas J. Barfield

Thomas J. Barfield is a historian of Central Eurasia and a professor of anthropology at Boston University.

Latest:

A Historical Case for Why the EU Could Endure for More Than 1,000 Years

Lane F. Fargher-Navarro

Lane F. Fargher-Navarro is the director of research at the Past Foundation, Ohio State University.

Latest:

Political Collapse: Lessons From Fallen Empires

John Schofield

John Schofield is an author and archaeology professor at the University of York, United Kingdom.

Latest:

How Archaeologists Can Solve the Earth’s ‘Wicked Problems’

Jeff Bryant

Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network.

Latest:

Why COVID-19 Proved Children Need Physical Schools, Not Virtual Education

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Guides

Guide to Alternatives to Industrial Agriculture

Industrial agriculture, with its heavy reliance on chemical inputs, monoculture cropping, and intensive farming practices, poses a significant threat to the environment and wildlife. The negative impacts of industrial agriculture include wildlife habitat destruction and biodiversity loss, soil degradation, water pollution, antibiotic resistance, major greenhouse gas emissions, and animal cruelty on a massive scale. Sustainable alternatives to industrial agriculture, such as organic farming, small-scale farming, regenerative farming, and veganic farming—offer a better way forward. These sustainable farming practices not only offer a way to produce food while minimizing harm, ensuring a more resilient and sustainable food system for future generations, but can also solve existential problems like climate change.

By Reynard Loki

Source: Earth Food Life Project

Area: Environment

Guide to the Hidden History of Debt

Our financial system originated in Mesopotamia, where it was designed to ensure economic stability for a community. Over time it has transformed into something much more predatory.

By Katherine Dolan

Source: Human Bridges Project

Area: Human Bridges

Guide to Human Bridges

With new anthropological, biological and scientific findings, we are increasingly able to trace the outlines and fill in the blanks of our human evolutionary story. This can help us better understand the social and cultural processes that produced the world we live in now. This guide to Human Bridges explores the work of experts from the fields of human biology, human origins, and anthropology who want to contribute their individual expertise to a wider accessible body of information, and enlist in the cause to make this material a staple of education at all stages of life.

By April M. Short

Source: Human Bridges Project

Area: Human Bridges

Guide to the Regenerative, Moneyless Economy

This guide will take you through examples of the regenerative, moneyless economy that is sometimes called “collaborative consumption.” The moneyless, sharing-based economy creates the opportunity to opt out of the mentality of disposability and the idea that “more is better,” both of which many of us are bombarded with from birth. The regenerative, moneyless economy provides an avenue for anyone to move away from the hoarding nightmare that has led to over-full garages and seldom-visited storage sheds, continent-sized trash islands, and enormous heaps of human waste. It does this by way of peer-to-peer systems set up for people to rent or borrow goods rather than buy and own them individually. It involves collaborative systems that supply people with the things they need, when they need them.

By April M. Short

Source: Local Peace Economy Project

Area: Local Peace Economy

Guide to Climate and Environmental Action

In a democratic society, the power to address the climate crisis lies with the people. And it begins at home, our backyards, our neighborhoods and local communities.

When we think about effective climate action, there are many different factors and options to consider, from working within your local community to advance climate resiliency projects and urging the media to meet its climate commitments, to supporting the growth and popularity of climate fiction. Climate action can also be aided by reframing the climate crisis. Instead of seeing it only through a scientific lens but rather as a form of oppression by the wealthy elite or a matter of children’s rights, the climate crisis can be addressed on a systemic, sociopolitical level.

This guide explores various ways to approach climate action and activism, including concrete examples you can use in your own backyard and local community, plus success stories that can be emulated and reproduced wherever you are.

By Reynard Loki

Source: Earth Food Life Project

Areas: Environment | Local Peace Economy

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New Additions

The Intricate Connection of Birdsongs to Human Language

Listening to birds benefits our mental health, leading to less stress and paranoia.

By Erika Schelby

How a Worker Cooperative Is Mitigating the Stray Animal Crisis in Texas

Houston’s Pet Care Co-op empowers humans and helps animals survive.

By Damon Orion

The Central Role of Collaboration and Trust in Human Societies

The concept of heterarchy has joined a developing paradigm shift in the social sciences.

By Carole Crumley

This Clinic in Chicago Offers Free Legal Aid to Solidarity Economy Groups

The Community Enterprise and Solidarity Clinic is part of a growing mutual aid movement in Chicago, Illinois.

By Damon Orion

The Gilded Age of Animal Advocacy: A Transformative Era for America’s Moral Compass

Nineteenth-century activists revolutionized attitudes toward nonhuman animals amid cultural, economic, and moral shifts in a rapidly changing nation.

By Bill Wasik, Monica Murphy

Classics

The Philosophy of Fichte in Its Relation to Pragmatism

This article on the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (associated with the movement of German idealism) appeared in the Philosophical Review, Volume 16, pp. 488-505, in 1907.

Ellen Bliss Talbot was a professor of philosophy at Mount Holyoke College from 1898 to 1932. From Wikisource:

“According to Dorothy Rogers and Therese B. Dykeman… ‘[Talbot] had a successful academic career, chairing Mount Holyoke’s philosophy department for thirty-two years and teaching part-time for several years after retirement. She published just three books, all on Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1898, 1899, 1906), in addition to her considerable number of articles in the Philosophical Review, Mind, and the American Journal of Psychology. Her commitment to women’s education at Mount Holyoke was unwavering, helping to ensure that the philosophy curriculum met the expectations of her fellow academicians as philosophy established itself as a profession.’ From ‘Introduction: Women in the American Philosophical Tradition 1800–1930,’ in Hypatia 19:2 (Spring 2004): viii-xxxiv.”

By Ellen Bliss Talbot

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

This is a speech by Frederick Douglass given on Monday, July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York. The oration was published as a pamphlet the same year. Annotations were provided by the Wikisource community.

By Frederick Douglass

The Shame of the Cities

“The Shame of the Cities is a book written by American author Lincoln Steffens. Published in 1904, it is a collection of articles which Steffens had written for McClure’s Magazine. It reports on the workings of corrupt political machines in several major cities in the United States, along with a few efforts to combat them. It is considered one of several early major pieces of muckraking journalism, but Steffens later claimed that the work made him ‘the first muckraker.’” (Source: Wikipedia)

By Lincoln Steffens

Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave

This 1847 memoir was written by prominent activist and writer William Wells Brown to support the abolitionist movement. It chronicles Brown’s cruel treatment as an enslaved man, the horrors that he witnessed, and his multiple escape attempts for freedom. Note: This book is part of a historical collection and may include offensive language.

By William Wells Brown

Ten Days in a Mad-House

From Wikisource:

“Ten Days in a Mad-House is a book written by newspaper reporter Nellie Bly and published by Norman Munro in New York City in 1887. The book comprised Blyʼs reportage for the New York World while on an undercover assignment in which she feigned insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Womenʼs Lunatic Asylum on Blackwellʼs Island.”

The full text of this edition published by Norman L. Munro is available on Wikisource at this link.

By Nellie Bly

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