“Earthly extraction” may bring to mind images of irreparable terrestrial violence—strip mining, soil depletion, deforestation— as well as related corporate and transnational competition, the coercion of a globalized labor force, and depletion of indigenous resources. Within scholarly and artistic endeavors of conservation, collection, curation, and interpretation, do we likewise practice a form of extraction? How might humanists, scientists, artists, librarians, and today’s student climate activists collaborate to introduce a series of mythologies about extraction that might reshape our goal of collective continuance? How might new mythologies inaugurate a politics of change?

As you move through our exhibit of images and books, consider:
What are our modern mythologies of extraction? Do you see traces of these mythologies on our walls? To your eye, does something else linger, more hopefully, inside these images too?