"In the name of agriculture, urban growth, and disease control, humans have drained, filled, or otherwise destroyed nearly 87 percent of the world’s wetlands over the past three centuries. Unintended consequences include biodiversity loss, poor water quality, and the erosion of cultural sites, and only in the past few decades have wetlands been widely recognized as worth preserving. Emily O’Gorman asks, What has counted as a wetland, for whom, and with what consequences?
Using the Murray-Darling Basin—a massive river system in eastern Australia that includes over 30,000 wetland areas—as a case study and drawing on archival research and original interviews, O’Gorman examines how people and animals have shaped wetlands from the late nineteenth century to today. She illuminates deeper dynamics by relating how Aboriginal peoples acted then and now as custodians of the landscape, despite the policies of the Australian government; how the movements of water birds affected farmers; and how mosquitoes have defied efforts to fully understand, let alone control, them. Situating the region’s history within global environmental humanities conversations, O’Gorman argues that we need to understand wetlands as socioecological landscapes in order to create new kinds of relationships with and futures for these places."
Heather Goodall, University of Technology Sydney describes Emily’s book as, ‘Clearly developed from deep research and long familiarity with these places as well as close conversations with many people along these waterways, this lucid, moving, and beautifully written book is a great achievement’.
Robert Wilson, author of Seeking Refuge: Birds and Landscapes of the Pacific Flyway calls Wetlands in a Dry Land ‘Superb. An important contribution to the water and wetland history of Australia and of interest to scholars focusing on water in arid lands elsewhere in the world’.
Meet the author:
Dr Emily O’Gorman is an environmental historian and Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Her research is primarily concerned with contested knowledges within broader cultural framings of authority, expertise, and landscapes. This has been supported by nationally competitive research grants as well as a Carson Writing Fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center, LMU, Munich from 2014-15. She is the author of Flood Country: An Environmental History of the Murray-Darling Basin (2012) and Wetlands in a Dry Land: More-than-human Histories of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (2021), and co-editor of Climate, Science, and Colonization (2014, with James Beattie and Matthew Henry) and Eco-Cultural Networks and the British Empire (2015, with Beattie and Edward Melillo). She co-leads the Environmental Humanities research group at Macquarie University, was a founding Associate Editor of the journal Environmental Humanities (2012-2014) and a founding co-editor of the Living Lexicon in that journal (2014-2020). She is currently the convenor of the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Environmental History Network.
Key themes for teaching and research:
Favorite chapters to teach:
I have incorporated quite a bit of my research for this book into my teaching! It has really helped me think it through and distill particular points. But I would have to say the parts I like teaching the most are the chapters on "Rippling: Capitalism, Baselines, and Seals" and "Infecting: Irrigation, Mosquitoes, and Malaria in Wartime".
Favorite chapter to write:
Definitely the chapter "Weaving: Postcolonial and Multispecies Politics of Plants". I learnt so much researching and writing this chapter, which is really a conversation with three amazing Aboriginal women.
Learn more about Emily and Wetlands in a Dry Land here:
Interview on Late Night Live, Radio National Australia (6 September 2021)
Interview for the New Books Network (8 September 2021)
Talk for the Greenhouse Book Talks Series (4 May 2021)
Click here to purchase at the University of Washington Press
Using the Murray-Darling Basin—a massive river system in eastern Australia that includes over 30,000 wetland areas—as a case study and drawing on archival research and original interviews, O’Gorman examines how people and animals have shaped wetlands from the late nineteenth century to today. She illuminates deeper dynamics by relating how Aboriginal peoples acted then and now as custodians of the landscape, despite the policies of the Australian government; how the movements of water birds affected farmers; and how mosquitoes have defied efforts to fully understand, let alone control, them. Situating the region’s history within global environmental humanities conversations, O’Gorman argues that we need to understand wetlands as socioecological landscapes in order to create new kinds of relationships with and futures for these places."
Heather Goodall, University of Technology Sydney describes Emily’s book as, ‘Clearly developed from deep research and long familiarity with these places as well as close conversations with many people along these waterways, this lucid, moving, and beautifully written book is a great achievement’.
Robert Wilson, author of Seeking Refuge: Birds and Landscapes of the Pacific Flyway calls Wetlands in a Dry Land ‘Superb. An important contribution to the water and wetland history of Australia and of interest to scholars focusing on water in arid lands elsewhere in the world’.
Meet the author:
Dr Emily O’Gorman is an environmental historian and Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Her research is primarily concerned with contested knowledges within broader cultural framings of authority, expertise, and landscapes. This has been supported by nationally competitive research grants as well as a Carson Writing Fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center, LMU, Munich from 2014-15. She is the author of Flood Country: An Environmental History of the Murray-Darling Basin (2012) and Wetlands in a Dry Land: More-than-human Histories of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (2021), and co-editor of Climate, Science, and Colonization (2014, with James Beattie and Matthew Henry) and Eco-Cultural Networks and the British Empire (2015, with Beattie and Edward Melillo). She co-leads the Environmental Humanities research group at Macquarie University, was a founding Associate Editor of the journal Environmental Humanities (2012-2014) and a founding co-editor of the Living Lexicon in that journal (2014-2020). She is currently the convenor of the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Environmental History Network.
Key themes for teaching and research:
- history of the category of "wetlands" as laden with specific sets of values
- wetlands as cultural landscapes formed through dynamic and shifting relationships between humans and nonhumans
Favorite chapters to teach:
I have incorporated quite a bit of my research for this book into my teaching! It has really helped me think it through and distill particular points. But I would have to say the parts I like teaching the most are the chapters on "Rippling: Capitalism, Baselines, and Seals" and "Infecting: Irrigation, Mosquitoes, and Malaria in Wartime".
Favorite chapter to write:
Definitely the chapter "Weaving: Postcolonial and Multispecies Politics of Plants". I learnt so much researching and writing this chapter, which is really a conversation with three amazing Aboriginal women.
Learn more about Emily and Wetlands in a Dry Land here:
Interview on Late Night Live, Radio National Australia (6 September 2021)
Interview for the New Books Network (8 September 2021)
Talk for the Greenhouse Book Talks Series (4 May 2021)
Click here to purchase at the University of Washington Press