Alexis Rider is a Ph.D Candidate in the History and Sociology of Science department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation, “A Melting Fossil: Ice, Life, and Time in the Cryosphere, 1840-1970,” asks how ice, an ephemeral and ubiquitous substance, has been deployed by diverse scientific disciplines to understand geologic timescales. Alexis completed her MA at the New School for Social Research, and her B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, which is where she is originally from.
Consuming the Anthropocene
In the basic conception of the Anthropocene, there are two actors: mankind and the environment. This sweeping and seemingly compelling divide at once highlights the separation of the two categories and collapses it: if humans are geologic force, we can no longer imagine ourselves outside of nature.
August 6, 2019