Silent Spring
Eco-toxicologist Christy Morrissey on Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
Learn from an active research eco-toxicologist about how relevant Rachel Carson and Silent Spring is for her science, her conservation work, and her teaching.
Christy Morrissey on Saving the Biodiversity of Farmlands
Christy Morrissey discusses her eco-toxicology work in an intensely active agricultural region where biodiversity has to live side by side with crop production. She focuses on how toxic various agrochemicals can be on migratory birds in particular. She talks about moving toward more biodiversity-friendly “Regenerative Agriculture” methods.
Chapter 8: Silent Spring
In this excerpt from Silent Spring, Chapter 8: “And no birds sing,” you and your students can take a deep dive into the qualitative and quantitative data from various research Dr. Carson used to understand how different birds were being affected by DDT and how this data was used to raise public awareness and change legislation.
Silent Spring Reading Guide by Christy Morrissey
Christy Morrissey of the University of Saskatchewan shares this resource she uses to get students discussing and working with concepts from Silent Spring.
Rachel Carson: a Poet of the Sea
This article, “The Right Way to Remember Rachel Carson” by Jill Lepore, published in The New Yorker, provides a biographical and historical glimpse into Rachel Carson and her musings prior to the release of her seminal work, Silent Spring. Carson was entranced by the sea and it influenced her writing and thinking about the patterns of nature that exist everywhere.
The Last Archive: Episode 9: For the Birds
In Episode 9 of “The Last Archive: For the Birds,” Jill Lepore dives deep into the archives to answer the question “What can the evidence of birds tell us about climate change?” Using essays, books, and unpublished letters by Rachel Carson as sources, this episode demonstrates how the observations and teachings of Carson can help us ask questions and seek answers to why we are seeing changes in biodiversity occurring today.
