Forerunners
Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works, published by the University of Minnesota Press. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship. Endlings
Rescue Me
An endling is the last known individual of a species; when that individual dies, the species becomes ex�nct. These “last individuals" are poignant characters in the stories that humans tell themselves about today's Anthropocene. In this evoca�ve work, Lydia Pyne explores how discussion about endlings—how we tell their histories—draws on deep tradi�ons of storytelling across a variety of narra�ve types that go well beyond the science of these species' biology or their evolu�onary history. Endlings provides a useful and though�ul discussion of species concepts: how species start and how (and why) they end, what it means to be a “charisma�c" species, the effects of rewilding, and what makes species ex�nc�on different in this era. From Benjamin the thylacine to Celia the ibex to Lonesome George the Galápagos tortoise, endlings, Pyne shows, have the power to shape how we think about grief, mourning, and loss amid the world's sixth mass ex�nc�on.
As we become more and more obsessed with imagining ourselves as benevolent rescuers of dogs, it is increasingly clear that it is dogs who are rescuing us. But from what? Exploring adop�on, work, food, and training, this book considers the social as fundamentally more-than-human and argues that the future belongs to dogs—and the humans they are pulling along.
Fables for the Anthropocene Lydia Pyne
On Dogs and Their Humans Margret Grebowicz
University of Minnesota Press August 2022 80pp 9781517914608 £9.00 PB
University of Minnesota Press August 2022 106pp 9781517914837 £9.00 PB
Studious Drift
Movements and Protocols for a Postdigital Education Peter Hyland & Tyson E. Lewis
The global pandemic has underscored contemporary reliance on digital environments. This is par�cularly true among schools and universi�es, which, in response, shi�ed much of their instruc�on online. Because the rise of e-learning logics, ed-tech industries, and enterprise learning-management systems all threaten to further commodify and instrumentalize higher educa�on, these technologies and pla�orms have to be crea�vely and cri�cally struggled over. Studious Dri� intervenes in this struggle by reviving the rela�onship between studying and the genera�ve space of the studio in service of advancing educa�onal experimenta�on for a world where digital tools have become a permanent part of educa�on. Drawing on Alfred Jarry’s pataphysics, the “science of imaginary solu�ons,” it reveals how the studio is a space-�me machine capable of traveling beyond the limits of conven�onal online learning to redefine educa�on as interdisciplinary, experimental, public study.
The School-Prison Trust
Sabina E. Vaught, Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy & Chin Jeremiah
The School–Prison Trust describes interrelated histories, ongoing ideologies, and contemporary expressions of what the authors call the “school–prison trust”: a conquest strategy encompassing the boarding school and juvenile prison models, and deployed in the long war against Na�ve peoples. At its heart, the book is a constella�on of stories of Indigenous self-determina�on in the face of this ongoing conquest. Following the stories of an incarcerated young man named Jakes, the authors consider features of school– prison rela�ons for young Na�ve people to ask urgent ques�ons about Indigenous sovereignty, conquest, survivance, and refusal.
University of Minnesota Press July 2022 142pp 9781517914264 £9.00 PB
University of Minnesota Press July 2022 98pp 9781517913212 £9.00 PB
Does the Earth Care?
Solarities
The world is changing. Progress no longer has a future but any earlier sense of Earth as “providen�al” seems of merely historical interest. The apparent absence of Earthly solicitude is a symptom and consequence of these successive Western modes of engagement with the Earth, now exemplified in global capitalism. Within these constructs, Earth can only appear as cons�tu�vely indifferent to the fate of all its inhabitants. The “provisional ecology” outlined in Does the Earth Care?— drawing on a variety of literary and philosophical sources from Richard Jefferies and Robert Macfarlane to Mar�n Heidegger and Gaia theory—fundamentally challenges that assump�on, while offering an Earthly alterna�ve to either cold realism or alienated despair in the face of impending ecological disaster.
Solari�es considers the possibili�es of organizing socie�es and economies around solar energy, and the challenges of a just and equitable transi�on away from fossil fuels. Far from presen�ng solarity as a utopian solu�on to the climate crisis, it cri�cally examines the ambiguous poten�als of solari�es: plural, situated, and o�en contradictory. Here, a diverse collec�ve of ac�vists, scholars, and prac��oners cri�cally engage a wide range of rela�onships and orienta�ons to the sun. They consider the material and infrastructural dimensions of solar power, the decolonial and feminist promises of decentralized energy, solarian rela�ons with more-thanhuman kin, and the problem of oppressive and weaponized solari�es. Solari�es imagines—and demands— possibili�es for energy jus�ce in this transi�on.
Indifference, Providence, and Provisional Ecology Mick Smith & Jason Young
University of Minnesota Press June 2022 132pp 9781517913205 £9.00 PB
Seeking Energy Justice Edited by Ayesha Vemuri & Darin Barney
University of Minnesota Press
May 2022 1 black and white illustra�on 92pp 9781517914141 £9.00 PB