More-than-human histories

Abstract

This article continues and extends a conversation between environmental history and the broader environmental humanities, outlining and defining an approach to more-than-human histories. Engaging with more-than-human and multispecies approaches in a range of fields within the broader environmental humanities, we point to a nested set of commitments that shape these research agendas. More-than-human histories as articulated here take on three of these commitments in particular: co-constitution; the presencing of multiple species and multiple voices; and situated politics and ethics. These commitments offer meeting points for environmental history and the broader environmental humanities, which can bring them into closer dialogue with a range of mutual benefits as well as raising some challenges for each. The article concludes with a consideration of the methodological implications of this approach, pointing to ways in which a more-than-human approach might allow environmental historians to uncover new sources and approach familiar ones from new angles.