In The Networked Wilderness, Matt Cohen examines communications systems in early New England and finds that, surprisingly, struggles over information technology were as important as theology, guns, germs, or steel in shaping the early colonization of North America. Colonists in New England have generally been viewed as immersed in a Protestant culture of piety and alphabetic literacy. At the same time, many scholars have insisted that the culture of the indigenous peoples of the region was a predominantly oral culture. But what if, Cohen posits, we thought about media and technology beyond the terms of orality and literacy?
Reconceptualizing aural and inscribed communication as a spectrum, The Networked Wilderness bridges the gap between the history of the book and Native American systems of communication. Cohen reveals that books, paths, recipes, totems, and animals and their sounds all took on new interactive powers as the English negotiated the well-developed informational trails of the Algonquian East Coast and reported their experiences back to Europe. Native and English encounters forced all parties to think of each other as audiences for any event that might become a kind of "publication."
Using sources ranging from Thomas Morton's Maypole festival to the architecture of today's Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Cohen shows that the era before the printing press came to New England was one of extraordinary fertility for communications systems in America.
A timely rethinking of the archetypal story of Noah, the great flood, and who was left behind as the waters rose
Most people know the story of Noah from a children’s bible or a play set with a colorful ship, bearded Noah, pairs of animals, and an uncomplicated vision of survival. Noah’s ark, however, will forever be haunted by what it leaves to the rising waters so that the world can begin again.
In Noah’s Arkive, Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates examine the long history of imagining endurance against climate catastrophe—as well as alternative ways of creating refuge. They trace how the elements of the flood narrative were elaborated in medieval and early modern art, text, and music, and now shape writing and thinking during the current age of anthropogenic climate change. Arguing that the biblical ark may well be the worst possible exemplar of human behavior, the chapters draw on a range of sources, from the Epic of Gilgamesh and Ovid’s tale of Deucalion and Pyrrah, to speculative fiction, climate fiction, and stories and art dwelling with environmental catastrophe. Noah’s Arkive uncovers the startling afterlife of the Genesis narrative written from the perspective of Noah’s wife and family, the animals on the ark, and those excluded and so left behind to die. This book of recovered stories speaks eloquently to the ethical and political burdens of living through the Anthropocene.
Following a climate change narrative across the millennia, Noah’s Arkive surveys the long history of dwelling with the consequences of choosing only a few to survive in order to start the world over. It is an intriguing meditation on how the story of the ark can frame how we think about environmental catastrophe and refuge, conservation and exclusion, offering hope for a better future by heeding what we know from the past.
North Korea is perilously close to developing strategic nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States and its East Asian allies. Since their first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea has struggled to perfect the required delivery systems. Kim Jong-un’s regime now appears to be close, however. Sung Chull Kim, Michael D. Cohen, and the volume contributors contend that the time to prevent North Korea from achieving this capability is virtually over; scholars and policymakers must turn their attention to how to deter a nuclear North Korea. The United States, South Korea, and Japan must also come to terms with the fact that North Korea will be able to deter them with its nuclear arsenal. How will the erratic Kim Jong-un behave when North Korea develops the capability to hit medium- and long-range targets with nuclear weapons? How will and should the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China respond, and what will this mean for regional stability in the short term and long term? The international group of authors in this volume address these questions and offer a timely analysis of the consequences of an operational North Korean nuclear capability for international security.
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