On Active Grounds considers the themes of agency and time through the burgeoning, interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities. Fourteen essays and a photo album cover topics such as environmental practices and history, temporal literacy, graphic novels, ecocinema, ecomusicology, animal studies, Indigeneity, wolf reintroduction, environmental history, green conservatism, and social-ecological systems change. The book also speaks to the growing concern regarding environmental issues in the aftermath of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) and the election of Donald Trump in the United States. This collection is organized as a written and visual appeal to issues such as time (how much is left?) and agency (who is active? what can be done? what does and does not work?). It describes problems and suggests solutions. On Active Grounds is unique in its explicit and twinned emphasis on time and agency in the context of the Environmental Humanities and a requisite interdisciplinarity.

Robert Boschman is a professor of English, Languages, and Cultures at Mount Royal University, Calgary. He is the author of In the Way of Nature: Ecology and Westward Expansion in the Poetry of Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth Bishop, and Amy Clampitt (2009) and co-editor with Mario Trono of Found in Alberta: Environmental Themes for the Anthropocesne (WLU Press, 2014).

Robert Boschman's profile page

Mario Trono studies visual cultures from an environmental perspective. He has a monograph on ecocinema forthcoming from WLU Press, and he co-edited (with Robert Boschman) Found in Alberta: Environmental Themes for the Anthropocene (2014). Mario was a co-founder of Under Western Skies, a biennial, interdisciplinary conference on the environment and teaches at Mount Royal University.

Mario Trono's profile page

"On Active Grounds: Agency and Time in the Environmental Humanities" is a timely, thought-provoking, and seminal work of scholarship that is unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library collections.

Midwest Book Review