Bathsheba Demuth
@brdemuth.bsky.social
Writer & environmental historian of cold places, now writing about the Yukon River. Author of FLOATING COAST. Prof at Brown University. Post mostly about animals, Arctic things & books. Heart is on a dogsled. #envhist #naturewriting
Pinned
Bathsheba Demuth
@brdemuth.bsky.social
· Aug 15
Where the Dogs Run | Bathsheba Demuth
The best days to work a salmon net are dry and bright. Bankside willows tilt from summer green to autumn gold. Light wind, no longer warm, riffles the
www.nybooks.com
“Deep relationship is a sensation of the particular, held in the eager tilt of a lead dog’s ears before a run or the feel of an old scar left by a salmon’s tooth.”
An essay on the mighty but sometimes overlooked chum salmon & dogs & rivers & love
#envhist #rivers
www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...
An essay on the mighty but sometimes overlooked chum salmon & dogs & rivers & love
#envhist #rivers
www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
"Industry, for the growing European middle classes, first meant freedom from want—from the real tyrannies of hunger and cold—and then freedom to want. Consumption itself became a kind of liberty."
Beautifully about Svalbard and the world by @brdemuth.bsky.social
hakaimagazine.com/features/foo...
Beautifully about Svalbard and the world by @brdemuth.bsky.social
hakaimagazine.com/features/foo...
Footprints of Extraction | Hakai Magazine
The Svalbard Archipelago was uninhabited until humans came searching for resources. A historian follows their tracks.
hakaimagazine.com
February 7, 2026 at 4:32 PM
"Industry, for the growing European middle classes, first meant freedom from want—from the real tyrannies of hunger and cold—and then freedom to want. Consumption itself became a kind of liberty."
Beautifully about Svalbard and the world by @brdemuth.bsky.social
hakaimagazine.com/features/foo...
Beautifully about Svalbard and the world by @brdemuth.bsky.social
hakaimagazine.com/features/foo...
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
"Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait" by @brdemuth.bsky.social, Dean's Associate Professor at IBES and @brownhist.bsky.social, has been selected as the 2025-2026 Brown University Book Award 📕🏆 👏
Learn more: insite.browntextbook.com/BrownBookAward
Learn more: insite.browntextbook.com/BrownBookAward
February 2, 2026 at 6:18 PM
"Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait" by @brdemuth.bsky.social, Dean's Associate Professor at IBES and @brownhist.bsky.social, has been selected as the 2025-2026 Brown University Book Award 📕🏆 👏
Learn more: insite.browntextbook.com/BrownBookAward
Learn more: insite.browntextbook.com/BrownBookAward
I can endorse working with @greenleejw.bsky.social for maps if you’re looking! He helped with a whole series of custom maps for an edited volume on rivers coming out in about a year — all sorts of scales and details
Will you be working this year on a book or article that's going to need #maps? Let me help! I draw custom maps for a living!
I draw each map by hand, to my clients' specifications, & each is unique. You can find out more on my website:
surprisedeelmaps.com
Here's some recent examples of my work:
I draw each map by hand, to my clients' specifications, & each is unique. You can find out more on my website:
surprisedeelmaps.com
Here's some recent examples of my work:
January 7, 2026 at 1:22 AM
I can endorse working with @greenleejw.bsky.social for maps if you’re looking! He helped with a whole series of custom maps for an edited volume on rivers coming out in about a year — all sorts of scales and details
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
@brdemuth.bsky.social's essay in @grantamag.bsky.social on time spent in the Yukon piecing together oral histories of the Russian empire. Read it to the end; no spoilers!
granta.com/where-the-la...
granta.com/where-the-la...
Where the Language Changes
‘I am on the hunt for the Russian Empire, or what traces might still exist of its colonial enterprise.’ Bathsheba Demuth travels the Yukon river, following the history of the fur trade and the Nulato ...
granta.com
December 30, 2025 at 6:12 PM
@brdemuth.bsky.social's essay in @grantamag.bsky.social on time spent in the Yukon piecing together oral histories of the Russian empire. Read it to the end; no spoilers!
granta.com/where-the-la...
granta.com/where-the-la...
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
“I heard her say, ‘The love is there. The love is there. The love is there. Babe, the love is there. The love is there. The love is there.’” - Laureli Ivanoff
At the turning of a season, a writer finds a sense of possibility.
Winter solstice is a time for planting seeds - High Country News
A writer recounts an intimate story of feeling the energy and love of her mother, who passed away more than 20 years ago, reverberate through her life even today.
buff.ly
December 29, 2025 at 5:43 PM
“I heard her say, ‘The love is there. The love is there. The love is there. Babe, the love is there. The love is there. The love is there.’” - Laureli Ivanoff
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
Tanacross #Dene #Language #Alaska
Saa Dzé’edeex Dé’ "Winter Solstice"; literary when the sun divides
Wunenh Nach’ehjedh "December"
Nach’imbâal Dzeen "Christmas"; refers to an old custom of giving/receiving gifts at the darkest time of year.
Dzeen Chox "Christmas" post-gold rush term
Saa Dzé’edeex Dé’ "Winter Solstice"; literary when the sun divides
Wunenh Nach’ehjedh "December"
Nach’imbâal Dzeen "Christmas"; refers to an old custom of giving/receiving gifts at the darkest time of year.
Dzeen Chox "Christmas" post-gold rush term
December 21, 2025 at 10:57 PM
I feel like this is the nightmare we all dread in the US — an active shooter in your community. Brown University is still in shelter in place 3 hours in, with 2 confirmed deaths, 8 in critical condition, and no shooter(s) in custody. One of my students had to run from the scene. Horrified.
December 14, 2025 at 12:10 AM
I feel like this is the nightmare we all dread in the US — an active shooter in your community. Brown University is still in shelter in place 3 hours in, with 2 confirmed deaths, 8 in critical condition, and no shooter(s) in custody. One of my students had to run from the scene. Horrified.
Thank you for all the suggestions in the replies! It’s really expanded this syllabus-in-progress
Favorite recent or classic readings on the history of environmental movements, 19th and 20th C? This is for a senior seminar, US and Europe as geographical focus
#envhist
#envhist
December 13, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Thank you for all the suggestions in the replies! It’s really expanded this syllabus-in-progress
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
"Rivers are messy: Beyond the water bias in research and management" — A new article co-authored by @brdemuth.bsky.social combines historical and natural science ways of thinking about rivers to argue for the importance of understanding them as more than simply channels of water.
Rivers are messy: Beyond the water bias in research and management
This article reviews current trends in interdisciplinary river research to argue that a “water bias” or tendency consider rivers as synonymous with water can hinder our understanding of rivers and con...
journals.plos.org
December 8, 2025 at 7:33 PM
"Rivers are messy: Beyond the water bias in research and management" — A new article co-authored by @brdemuth.bsky.social combines historical and natural science ways of thinking about rivers to argue for the importance of understanding them as more than simply channels of water.
Favorite recent or classic readings on the history of environmental movements, 19th and 20th C? This is for a senior seminar, US and Europe as geographical focus
#envhist
#envhist
December 8, 2025 at 7:53 PM
Favorite recent or classic readings on the history of environmental movements, 19th and 20th C? This is for a senior seminar, US and Europe as geographical focus
#envhist
#envhist
This pretty much sums up why I’m reviving the plan B’s I had in grad school.
www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself
Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.
www.currentaffairs.org
December 8, 2025 at 3:52 PM
This pretty much sums up why I’m reviving the plan B’s I had in grad school.
www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
A lovely piece on the Greenlandic photographer Inuuteq Storch, who has such an eye for movement and light and what lies beneath surfaces
www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...
www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...
A Greenlandic Photographer’s Tender Portraits of Daily Life
Inuuteq Storch set out to rediscover Inuit culture that was suppressed by Danish colonizers, by finding its traces in the everyday.
www.newyorker.com
December 8, 2025 at 1:32 AM
A lovely piece on the Greenlandic photographer Inuuteq Storch, who has such an eye for movement and light and what lies beneath surfaces
www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...
www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...
A reminder of late summer from doing much overdue photo backups today. Caribou bull in west Denali National Park. Tundra about to turn, velvet about to shed.
November 24, 2025 at 11:19 PM
A reminder of late summer from doing much overdue photo backups today. Caribou bull in west Denali National Park. Tundra about to turn, velvet about to shed.
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
I'm opening up a Black & Indigenous environmental art gallery
@umterps.bsky.social to help students navigate climate anxiety & other stresses that come with learning about environmental injustice & environmental racism. Please consider donating & coming to our fundraiser @framebridge.bsky.social!
@umterps.bsky.social to help students navigate climate anxiety & other stresses that come with learning about environmental injustice & environmental racism. Please consider donating & coming to our fundraiser @framebridge.bsky.social!
November 8, 2025 at 7:28 PM
I'm opening up a Black & Indigenous environmental art gallery
@umterps.bsky.social to help students navigate climate anxiety & other stresses that come with learning about environmental injustice & environmental racism. Please consider donating & coming to our fundraiser @framebridge.bsky.social!
@umterps.bsky.social to help students navigate climate anxiety & other stresses that come with learning about environmental injustice & environmental racism. Please consider donating & coming to our fundraiser @framebridge.bsky.social!
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
Exactly a year ago, Ellen Wohl, @parriblue.bsky.social and I spent two days in Providence thinking about #rivers and how we conceptualize them & live with them. Here’s the result of history and fluvial geomorphology teaming up. #envhist
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Rivers are messy: Beyond the water bias in research and management
This article reviews current trends in interdisciplinary river research to argue that a “water bias” or tendency consider rivers as synonymous with water can hinder our understanding of rivers and con...
doi.org
November 6, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Exactly a year ago, Ellen Wohl, @parriblue.bsky.social and I spent two days in Providence thinking about #rivers and how we conceptualize them & live with them. Here’s the result of history and fluvial geomorphology teaming up. #envhist
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Exactly a year ago, Ellen Wohl, @parriblue.bsky.social and I spent two days in Providence thinking about #rivers and how we conceptualize them & live with them. Here’s the result of history and fluvial geomorphology teaming up. #envhist
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Rivers are messy: Beyond the water bias in research and management
This article reviews current trends in interdisciplinary river research to argue that a “water bias” or tendency consider rivers as synonymous with water can hinder our understanding of rivers and con...
doi.org
November 6, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Exactly a year ago, Ellen Wohl, @parriblue.bsky.social and I spent two days in Providence thinking about #rivers and how we conceptualize them & live with them. Here’s the result of history and fluvial geomorphology teaming up. #envhist
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
I’m so excited and honored for this upcoming talk & events at Oxford, some with an amazing lineup of other Arctic folks!
And on Thursday @brdemuth.bsky.social will be giving our inaugural flagship lecture! Wed and Thurs are currently sold out, but there are always no-shows, so please sign up for the waitlist!
torch.ox.ac.uk/event/arctic...
torch.ox.ac.uk/event/arctic...
Bathsheba Demuth
torch.ox.ac.uk
November 3, 2025 at 4:50 PM
I’m so excited and honored for this upcoming talk & events at Oxford, some with an amazing lineup of other Arctic folks!
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
So far, the administration's Alaska agenda is still a lot of bluster and not a lot of action. Great reporting from @loisparshley.bsky.social for @grist.org
Trump officials say Alaska is 'open for business.' So far, no one's buying.
The administration wants to drill in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Oil companies don’t, leaving Alaska to spend millions propping up the idea.
grist.org
October 31, 2025 at 6:43 PM
So far, the administration's Alaska agenda is still a lot of bluster and not a lot of action. Great reporting from @loisparshley.bsky.social for @grist.org
I’m so excited to talk about this great book with Joseph Lee tomorrow. If you’re in Providence, come by!
October 29, 2025 at 8:08 PM
I’m so excited to talk about this great book with Joseph Lee tomorrow. If you’re in Providence, come by!
In case you’re free in July and want to spend a week on the Yukon…
freeflowinstitute.com/product/rive...
freeflowinstitute.com/product/rive...
RIVERS IN TIME, RIVERS IN WORDS - Freeflow Institute
An experiential deep dive into the history + evolving narrative of the Yukon
freeflowinstitute.com
October 24, 2025 at 7:54 PM
In case you’re free in July and want to spend a week on the Yukon…
freeflowinstitute.com/product/rive...
freeflowinstitute.com/product/rive...
Last week, western Alaska was hit by the powerful remnants of a typhoon. Recovery is just beginning for communities an airplane away building materials & other support. PBS has a good overview of this social-climate disaster. Ways to support linked below. m.youtube.com/watch?v=t5kz...
Rescue crews airlift hundreds out of rural Alaskan villages after powerful storm
YouTube video by PBS NewsHour
m.youtube.com
October 19, 2025 at 8:39 PM
Last week, western Alaska was hit by the powerful remnants of a typhoon. Recovery is just beginning for communities an airplane away building materials & other support. PBS has a good overview of this social-climate disaster. Ways to support linked below. m.youtube.com/watch?v=t5kz...
“what happens if we also reconnect with the mule? What can mules teach us about the black history of land and violence in the United States?”
A terrific piece of #envhist on mules, labor, and how “empire doesn’t always win” from @roguechieftan.bsky.social
www.sciencehistory.org/stories/maga...
A terrific piece of #envhist on mules, labor, and how “empire doesn’t always win” from @roguechieftan.bsky.social
www.sciencehistory.org/stories/maga...
Mule Power
Unpacking empires and diaspora in Mexico and the United States.
www.sciencehistory.org
October 19, 2025 at 8:31 PM
“what happens if we also reconnect with the mule? What can mules teach us about the black history of land and violence in the United States?”
A terrific piece of #envhist on mules, labor, and how “empire doesn’t always win” from @roguechieftan.bsky.social
www.sciencehistory.org/stories/maga...
A terrific piece of #envhist on mules, labor, and how “empire doesn’t always win” from @roguechieftan.bsky.social
www.sciencehistory.org/stories/maga...
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
This year I wrote a book about how Columbus colonized the Caribbean in 1492 - not what is now the US mainland.
My book DARK LABORATORY celebrates Kalinago survivance and the African agrarian x aquatic traditions people like my ancestors, who were enslaved, brought to the region.
My book DARK LABORATORY celebrates Kalinago survivance and the African agrarian x aquatic traditions people like my ancestors, who were enslaved, brought to the region.
October 14, 2025 at 3:12 AM
This year I wrote a book about how Columbus colonized the Caribbean in 1492 - not what is now the US mainland.
My book DARK LABORATORY celebrates Kalinago survivance and the African agrarian x aquatic traditions people like my ancestors, who were enslaved, brought to the region.
My book DARK LABORATORY celebrates Kalinago survivance and the African agrarian x aquatic traditions people like my ancestors, who were enslaved, brought to the region.
I’m very lucky to work with Myles, and am so excited to hear him talk about his amazing new book in a few weeks!
Join IBES for a Family Weekend book talk! Asst Prof Myles Lennon will discuss his new book, Subjects of the Sun, in a conversation moderated by Assoc Prof @brdemuth.bsky.social.
Oct 18, 10-11am, 85 Waterman St & online
events.brown.edu/ibes/event/3...
@brownanthro.bsky.social @brownhist.bsky.social
Oct 18, 10-11am, 85 Waterman St & online
events.brown.edu/ibes/event/3...
@brownanthro.bsky.social @brownhist.bsky.social
September 25, 2025 at 10:16 PM
I’m very lucky to work with Myles, and am so excited to hear him talk about his amazing new book in a few weeks!
Reposted by Bathsheba Demuth
Something good: a new, nonprofit newsroom run by some wonderful, experienced folks (core crew from Outside mag's glory days) dedicated to journalism about American public lands! Looks like the plan is to collaborate a fair bit with other outlets.
RE:PUBLIC
INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM FOR PUBLIC LANDS.
www.republic.land
September 10, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Something good: a new, nonprofit newsroom run by some wonderful, experienced folks (core crew from Outside mag's glory days) dedicated to journalism about American public lands! Looks like the plan is to collaborate a fair bit with other outlets.