Welcome to SmallerPlanet.org.
In contrast to my personal homepage (BarryZellen.com), which focuses mainly on my published and completed writings, this site focuses on my ongoing projects and continuing project pipeline of works in development, sometimes for many years (in some cases, decades!), with some nearing completion, while others are just getting off the ground. Many of these works-in-progress are archival projects that aspire to recover lost, missing, or otherwise overlooked works from yesteryear, providing a very personal, human perspective on historical change from ring-side observers and participants that could otherwise be omitted from history and forgotten by posterity.
Among these many continuing projects is included my longest running project -- the CHanging ARctic GEopolitics (CH.AR.GE) project, exploring Arctic and indigenous issues, and which since its formal inception at the end of the Cold War in 1991 (thanks in large part to Ron Purver, Mark Heller and their colleagues at the now-shuttered but never to be forgotten Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security (CIIPS)) has yielded several authored monographs, edited and co-edited volumes, and numerous chapters and articles including Land, Indigenous Peoples, and Conflict (Routledge 2015); Culture, Conflict and Counterinsurgency (Stanford 2014), The Fast Changing Arctic - Rethinking Arctic Security for a Warmer World (University of Calgary, Northern Lights Series, 2013), The Art of War in an Asymmetric World (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), Arctic Doom / Arctic Boom - The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic (Praeger / ABC-Clio, Security and the Environment Series, 2009), On Thin Ice - The Inuit, the State and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty (Lexington Books, 2009), and Breaking the Ice - From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic (Lexington Books, 2008).
In addition to these completed components of what has evolved into my lifelong CH.AR.GE project are numerous archival recovery projects that have brought me to many amazing archives -- from the contemplative and serene archive St. Bonaventure University in Olean, NY to the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA, all the way to Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, University of Oxford, to the Northern Studies Collection at the University of Hokkaido to the Majlis Adat Istiadat Sarawak and State Library of Sarawak in Kuching, Sarawak -- where I've enjoyed searching for lost, missing or just overlooked-in-plain sight memoirs, diaries, journals, treatises and other writings at risk of being overlooked by history, but worthy of rediscovery, reexamination, recognition in today's world (and tomorrow's too). There are few things as exciting as stumbling upon a lost work, finding a never-before-published and in some cases not-yet-completed draft, finding preserved correspondence recording the original thoughts and ideas of an historic figure mid-conversation, or rediscovering a work that has since faded from view, whose surviving published copies may have dwindled to just a small handful, and in some cases a sole-surviving copy and thus at risk of being lost forever. At its heart, Smaller Planet is all about finding, saving, and fostering awareness of these hidden gems so they become part of our historical memory and not lost to historical amnesia. In time, I hope Smaller Planet evolves into a bona fide publisher of rediscovered works. For the time being, we're just a small web repository, with a slew of projects in the pipeline - eternally underfunded, but always having fun!
Projects in the pipeline include:
We also have a page with my thanks to the many colleagues who have assisted me during my research, and to the forthcoming Obscurity Press relaunch!
Among these many continuing projects is included my longest running project -- the CHanging ARctic GEopolitics (CH.AR.GE) project, exploring Arctic and indigenous issues, and which since its formal inception at the end of the Cold War in 1991 (thanks in large part to Ron Purver, Mark Heller and their colleagues at the now-shuttered but never to be forgotten Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security (CIIPS)) has yielded several authored monographs, edited and co-edited volumes, and numerous chapters and articles including Land, Indigenous Peoples, and Conflict (Routledge 2015); Culture, Conflict and Counterinsurgency (Stanford 2014), The Fast Changing Arctic - Rethinking Arctic Security for a Warmer World (University of Calgary, Northern Lights Series, 2013), The Art of War in an Asymmetric World (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), Arctic Doom / Arctic Boom - The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic (Praeger / ABC-Clio, Security and the Environment Series, 2009), On Thin Ice - The Inuit, the State and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty (Lexington Books, 2009), and Breaking the Ice - From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic (Lexington Books, 2008).
In addition to these completed components of what has evolved into my lifelong CH.AR.GE project are numerous archival recovery projects that have brought me to many amazing archives -- from the contemplative and serene archive St. Bonaventure University in Olean, NY to the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA, all the way to Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, University of Oxford, to the Northern Studies Collection at the University of Hokkaido to the Majlis Adat Istiadat Sarawak and State Library of Sarawak in Kuching, Sarawak -- where I've enjoyed searching for lost, missing or just overlooked-in-plain sight memoirs, diaries, journals, treatises and other writings at risk of being overlooked by history, but worthy of rediscovery, reexamination, recognition in today's world (and tomorrow's too). There are few things as exciting as stumbling upon a lost work, finding a never-before-published and in some cases not-yet-completed draft, finding preserved correspondence recording the original thoughts and ideas of an historic figure mid-conversation, or rediscovering a work that has since faded from view, whose surviving published copies may have dwindled to just a small handful, and in some cases a sole-surviving copy and thus at risk of being lost forever. At its heart, Smaller Planet is all about finding, saving, and fostering awareness of these hidden gems so they become part of our historical memory and not lost to historical amnesia. In time, I hope Smaller Planet evolves into a bona fide publisher of rediscovered works. For the time being, we're just a small web repository, with a slew of projects in the pipeline - eternally underfunded, but always having fun!
Projects in the pipeline include:
- The People of Athens vs. Socrates - the collected dramatic and literary works featuring the founding father of philosophy who was executed by the good people of Athens;
- The Collected Writings of Lady Sylvia Brooke, including her published short stories, articles, novels, and plays as well as newly discovered lost works that were never before published;
- From Headhunters to Hollywood -- the epic, unfinished saga of the White Rajah film project, and Lady Sylvia Brooke's herculean effort to convince Hollywood to tell the story on the silver screen of the first of Sarawak's white rajahs, James Brooke;
- Arctic Inferno: The recovered diaries of the C.S.S. Shenandoah, including a restoration of the original edit by commander James I. Waddell of his memoir of the infamous Confederate naval mission to the Arctic in addition to several never-before-published diaries;
- Lost at Sea: The recovered writings of John Newland Maffitt, including his unpublished second novel which was nearly completed at the time of his death;
- FUBAR: The untold story of the accidental atomic annihilation of Nagasaki's long-oppressed Christian community in the Urakami valley, just over the mountains from Nagasaki;
- The 'Forgotten War' in the Aleutians, an anthology of essays, theses and chapters from the perspective of the U.S., Canadian and Japanese militaries as well as of the indigenous Unangax themselves;
- Love and War: Strategic theory's most intriguing power couples, from Marie and Carl von Clausewitz to Fawn and Bernard Brodie;
- Second Act: The legend of Peter Stuart Ney, North Carolina school teacher ... and according to some, none other than Marshal Michel Ney, whom history records as being executed in Paris years before; and
- Terror Eyes: Manifestos of America Terror. First person treatises by some of America's most notorious terrorists.
We also have a page with my thanks to the many colleagues who have assisted me during my research, and to the forthcoming Obscurity Press relaunch!
