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After Ice

After Ice

Cold Humanities for a Warming Planet

Foreword by Emma Kowal and Joanna Radin

Edited by Rafico Ruiz, Paula Schönach and Rob Shields

Published by: University of British Columbia Press

Imprint: UBC Press

264 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 mm, 16 b&w photos, 3 illus., 2 maps

Paperback
9780774869379
Published: July 2025

£28.99

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Hardcover
9780774869362
Published: November 2024

£79.00

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Description
Contents
Authors

As the climate warms and the hydrological cycle falters, ice is no longer a reliable feature of higher latitudes or winter seasons. What are the consequences of the planet's waning capacity to cool? In other words, what comes after ice?

This collection examines the implications of the end of consistent freezing and thawing cycles. After Ice gathers experts in a wide range of disciplines to articulate aspects of the cold humanities. They investigate ice and its dynamic properties as a foundational element of Indigenous communities in the Arctic regions, as a commodity with technological and political value, and as a reflection of environmental change and the passage of time.

As the future of the cryosphere is increasingly determined by human behaviour, this thought-provoking exploration envisions ice as both a phase of water and as a milieu for sensemaking. It asks us to consider how to define, describe, and materially characterize our warming world.

Foreword: Cryopolitics after Ice / Joanna Radin and Emma Kowal

Introduction: A Cold Humanities after Ice / Rafico Ruiz, Paula Schönach, and Rob Shields

Part 1: Cold Humanities for the Arctic

1 On Cryohuman Relations / Cymene Howe

2 I, Nuligak and Indigenous Arctic Temporalities / Hester Blum

3 Freeze-up, Breakup, and Colonial Circulation / Liza Piper

Part 2: Warm, Cool, Icy, Changing Cold Social Conditions

4 Of Mammoths and Meat: Natural History and Artificial Refrigeration in the Nineteenth Century / Rebecca J.H. Woods

5 Materials after Ice Thaw: Methane, Microbes, Mud / Juan Francisco Salazar and Jessica O'Reilly

6 Archives Melting (and Meltdowns) / Mél Hogan and Sarah T. Roberts

Part 3: The Cultural Afterlives of Ice

7 Perishing Twice: On Play in a Warming World / Alenda Y. Chang

8 Afterlife of Ice: Animation and Air / Esther Leslie

9 Contrapuntal Ice / Jeff Diamanti

10 On the Techno-Metaphorology of Hibernation / Zsolt Miklósvölgyi and Márió Z. Nemes

Afterword: A Synthesis and Research Agenda for the Cold Humanities / Mark Carey

Index

Rafico Ruiz is the associate director of research at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. He is the author of Slow Disturbance: Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier and coeditor, with Melody Jue, of Saturation: An Elemental Politics.

Paula Schönach is the senior adviser in sustainability at the Aalto University School of Business and the director of the CLIMATE-research program of the Strategic Research Council, both in Finland. With Esa Ruuskanen and Kari Väyrynen, she is a coeditor of Suomen ympäristöhistoria 1700-luvulta nykyaikaan (Environmental history of Finland from the eighteenth century to the present).

Rob Shields is the Henry Marshall Tory Research Chair and a professor of human geography and sociology at the University of Alberta. As well as authoring publications such as Spatial Questions: Cultural Topologies and Social Spatialisations, The Virtual, and Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity, he has conducted online projects such as wildspirits.ualberta.ca and is the founder of the journal Space and Culture.

Contributors: Hester Blum, Mark Carey, Alenda Y. Chang, Jeff Diamanti, Mél Hogan, Cymene Howe, Emma Kowal, Esther Leslie, Zsolt Miklósvölgyi, Márió Z. Nemes, Jessica O'Reilly, Liza Piper, Joanna Radin, Sarah T. Roberts, Juan Francisco Salazar, Rebecca J.H. Woods