Wetland Cultures Ancient, Traditional, Contemporary

Traditional cultures have a long and vital association with wetlands as sacred places imbued with spiritual and ceremonial significance that provide physical sustenance and sources of materials in paludiculture. Ancient Greek and Roman cultures denigrated wetlands as places of disease, terror, horror, the hellish and the monstrous. Judeo-Christian theology was syncretized with them into the mainstream denigration of wetlands. Wetlands are a marginalized community, an oppressed minority and non-binary, queer bodies of water. 

Rod Giblett is Honorary Associate Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Writing and Literature Program at Deakin University, Australia. He has a rich publication history and research focuses on wetland cultural studies, psychoanalytic ecology, conservation counter-theology and Thoreau and Benjamin studies.