Environmental History Resources
Environmental History News
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Tuesday, 1 July 2008
CFP: Forests and Landscapes, Besancon (France) 2009
The Groupe d’Histoire des Forêts Françaises is pleased to announce its 10th international Conference on Forests and landscapes, which will be held in Besançon, France, September 16-18, 2009. visit the website at http://www.ghff.ens.fr/2009/colloque.html for further details.
Proposals (individual papers only) may be sent to the Organizing Committee before September 15, 2008. Please send all enquiries and proposals at ghff2009@mshe.univ-fcomte.fr
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
New MSc in Landscape, Environment and History at the University of Edinburgh
Online interface of MSc
Every day our news bulletins contain reports that are concerned with our environment and the landscapes we inhabit. This new Masters course provides a historical perspective to contemporary environmental issues.
The programme will appeal to students all over the world who wish to study for a Master's degree where history meets politics and ecology, where heritage and history intersect, and where historical urban landscapes and the built environment are of interest.
The MSc programme:
- explores the history, archaeology and ecology of landscapes, using Scottish examples set in national and international contexts
- illuminates how urban and rural space and resources have changed over time
- develops independent study and research skills
This is an e-learning based MSc. You can access the course materials from anywhere in the world. The course is written by a team of senior academics in social and urban history, environmental history, archaeology, conservation, and politics who have combined with curators and librarians in the National Library of Scotland, Royal Commission of Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and other cultural organisations to produce video lectures, interactive learning modules, and virtual tours. It is a unique assembly of expertise and digital resources.
This learning environment is complemented with online e-resources - books, journal articles and a range of original sources through Edinburgh University Library's extensive list of digital subscriptions. There is a strong Scottish flavour to the examples and exercises yet the course draws on national and international contexts and scholarly literature from several disciplines.
For a taster of the teaching materials and further details about the course go to www.shc.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/taught/landscape/ or download the flyer.
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
CFP: Nature and the environment in feature films
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Third-Round Deadline: August 1, 2008
AREA: Nature and the Environment in Feature Films
This area investigates the uses and representations of nature and the environment in feature films, rather than the more often discussed use of documentaries to reflect on the natural world. Thanks to Al Gore, and others, we expect and respect documentary films that address environmental issues, but feature films can also speak to environmental issues or provide nuanced representations of nature.
Feature films sometimes tackle the same issues and sometimes do so unintentionally. Can feature films provide a forum for discussion on environmental issues? Is such a message always sensationalized with Hollywood stars and big budget special effects? Is this always an intersection of box office revenue and message, with box office the only hoped for winner?
Consider films like “Day After Tomorrow” or “There Will Be Blood”. How do these films, and many others, represent the natural world and/or the misuse of that world? What feature films do you identify as overtly or more subtlety environmental? Are there directors who can tell a cinematically good story while making environmental statements? How does shot selection affect a response to the natural world? Can feature film stories be more effective at sending an environmentalist message because of the larger audiences they may reach?
Re-screen your favorite films with an eye to the natural world and environmental considerations.
Submit a brief (200 word) abstract to carmic28@msu.edu by August 1, 2008.
Deborah Carmichael
Michigan State University
Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Culture
235 Bessey Hall
East Lansing MI 48824
517-353-9917
Carmic28@msu.edu
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for third-round proposals: August 1, 2008
Monday, 2 June 2008
Climate Change and Violence: Workshop Series Autumn 2008 - 2010
Crisis Forum is convening a series of seven, one day, workshops to explore and interrogate the connections between accelerating anthropogenic climate change and the potentiality for violence in all its forms.
Anyone who has an interest in this area - whether academics, from NGOs, think-tanks, policy makers in government or business, or independent researchers - are invited (subject to a limit on numbers) to participate. We are particularly encouraging potential participants as of now to offer papers for the workshop or workshops they consider most relevant to their interest.
The series will be held at diverse university and other institutional venues throughout the country, and run from autumn 2008 until autumn 2010, in each instance on a Friday. Each workshop will include 6 to 8, twenty minute presentations-cum-position papers which will be the basis for broad discussion. We are taking expressions of interest to attend the first workshop at the University of Southampton on Friday 14 November 2008, as of immediate effect. But we also concurrently are inviting submission of abstracts for each and any workshop in the series. Submission deadlines for the initial two workshops at Southampton and Bath can be found on the full Climate Change and Violence proposal/programme which can be viewed online at www.crisis-forum.org.uk/CCandV_Prop2008.htm (a 'Word' version is available on request).
Practical information will follow. There may be a minimum cost to non-presentation participants to each workshop but these will be kept to a minimum. There will be in each instance, some concessionary places available. Workshop findings will be made available on a dedicated website which will be developed into a report available both to policy makers and the wider public.
Please contact Crisis Forum project coordinator, Marianne McKiggan, marianne@crisis-forum.org.uk if you would like to attend the Southampton or other workshops, have an abstract to submit, or have any other queries, comments, ideas or suggestions.
Please feel free to forward this notice as appropriate to friends and colleagues
Dr. Mark Levene
Crisis Forum project director.
Marianne McKiggan
Crisis Forum project coordinator.
marianne@crisis-forum.org.uk
www.crisis-forum.org.uk
Thursday, 15 May 2008
New Book
South Asia: An Environmental History
A new book has been published that is a chronological study of South Asia that emphasizes the effect of humans on their environment, and in return the influence of nature on the evolution of human society. It charts important events in the environmental history of South Asia, from the development of the Indus civilization ca. 2500 B.C.E., to the impact on Sri Lanka of the tsunami of December 2004. This volume is part of a fifteen-volume series entitled "Nature and Human Societies" which attempts to present the first complete set of global environmental histories.
The full citation of the title is: Christopher V. Hill, South Asia: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2008).
Further information can be found the the ABC-Clio website.
Sunday, 4 May 2008
The Association for Environmental Archaeology (AEA) Annual Conference
Aarhus , Denmark 12 –14 September 2008
The Association for Environmental Archaeology (AEA) invites participation in the Association's Annual Conference, to be held on 12 th –14 th September 2008, in Aarhus , Denmark with the theme:
“The Consequences of Fire”
The 2008 AEA Annual Conference will be organised and hosted by the Department of Environmental Archaeology and Conservation at Moesgård Museum , Århus (www.moesmus.dk).
The conference venue will be: Handelsfagskolen. Skaade Skovvej 2, 8270 Højbjerg – 15 minutes walk from Moesgaard Museum and about 15 minutes by bus from Århus city centre.
The official conference language is English.
The conference will focus on the role and consequences of FIRE in the preservation and interpretation of the environmental archaeological record. Fire is usually connected with some kind of human activity, and charred organic material, bone, weed seeds, grain, wood, pollen or whatever, is usually among the most abundant find groups recovered in archaeology.
Provisional session titles: Intentional use of Fire, Accidental Fires, Transformation Processes.
Offers of oral presentations (20-25 minutes) and posters are invited and should be accompanied by an abstract. Abstracts should be 1-3 pages in length, including figures and bibliography if appropriate. The abstracts will be included in a conference book. Please send them to the contact address below:
Deadline for Abstracts (Papers and Posters): 31 July 2008
Contact:
Att: AEA Conference
Peter Hambro Mikkelsen
E-mail: AEA@hum.au.dk
www.envarch.net/events/index.html#aea2008
Saturday, 12 April 2008
Programme now available
Conference: Common Ground, Converging Gazes. Integrating the Social and Environmental in History
Paris, 11-13 September 2008
The ‘Common Ground, Converging Gazes’ conference website is now available at ttp://crh.ehess.fr/document.php?id=944.
The conference, to be held on 11-13 September in Paris, aims to explore the opportunities for integrating social and environmental history.
Key themes include: the interconnections between social inequality and environmental degradation; commons and conflicts; environments and identities; and demography, resources and the environment.
The provisional conference programme, with keynote addresses by Juan Martinez-Alier and John McNeill, can also be viewed.
Registration forms can be downloaded directly from the website.
The website provides practical information for delegates on everything from travel and hotels to the optional social programme (including a guided cruise on the River Seine).
It will also provide updates on the conference programme and participants as they are confirmed.
You can contact the conference organisers directly at:
Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud: massard@ehess.fr
Stephen Mosley: s.mosley@leedsmet.ac.uk
Saturday, 22 March 2008
New book: Energy Consumption in England and Wales, 1560-2000
Paul Warde's new book, Energy Consumption in England and Wales, 1560-2000, has just published in Italy by Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerche, Instituto di Studi sulle Societa del Mediterraneo, (ISBN 978-88-8080-082-8). This quite short book (137pp) contains calculations of energy consumption since Elizabethean times along with a highly important commentary on the dramatic history of English energy consumption.
For more info contact the author Paul Warde.
Saturday, 5 January 2008
Chasing Eden: nature, health & the politics of environment
Exeter, 4-5 September 2008, Eden Project & University of Exeter (Cornwall Campus)
This two-day conference seeks to encourage a conversation between historians of politics and historians of science, medicine, and environment on the topic of environmental politics in the modern era . Among the issues it seeks to address are the following: What was the role of nature in modern politics? What role did urban public health reform have in the rise of modern environmental politics? When can we say environmentalism/ecologism became a significant political force? Why did ‘Green’ parties fail? What was distinctive about European environmental politics? How have political parties adapted to environmentalism and issues of environmental justice? What happened to conservation in the age of environment?
For further information download flyer (PDF) >>
Saturday, 15 December 2007
CFP: Memory and watercourses. Study day, Liessies, France, Thursday 25th September 2008
For centuries, the changes of the hydrographical network in the North of France have been radical and mainly due to human actions. Since the Middle Ages, they were stimulated by urban development and economic needs (driving force of water mills, improvement of river navigation) and organised by the secular or the monastic power. In the Escaut basin, slow flows, slight slopes and a convenient landscape made these changes easier. In modern times, the industrialization of the region accentuated them, and they are still going on today with the huge project of the Seine River-North interconnection.
Canalizations (with multiple purposes), diversions and interconnections follow one another up to deeply alter the course and the functioning of rivers (flow, ecology, landscapes…) and to modify noticeably environment (canalized banks, fauna and flora modifications…) and the quality of water. The changes are sometimes so important that the former aspect of a river has been erased, becoming the matter of geomorphologists, archaeologists and historians.
The next Meetings of Liessies, open to all disciplines, will deal with the modifications of watercourses, the impact and the perception of these changes. Papers on North of France and the nearest basins will be privileged. However, there is no geographical restriction. The “water records” and other kinds of sources (whether written, cartographic, archaeological, legal, geographical or sociological) should be taken with the greatest care.
Download full call for papers >>
Saturday, 8 September 2007
Environmental and Social Inequalities in the City since 1800
Session for the IXth International Conference on Urban History, France, August 27-30, 2008
Overwhelmingly it is the urban poor who live in the worst environments and suffer most from environmental problems. Contemporary research on air quality, flood risk, and industrial hazards shows that poorer people are twice as likely to live near polluting factories, and children from families on low incomes are five times more likely to be killed by road traffic than children from affluent areas. Still over 90% of the most polluting factories in London are located in neighbourhoods occupied by communities with below average income. In France, 45% of the so-called “sensitive urban zones” (Zones Urbaines Sensibles) are subject to excessive noise, and 42% of these vulnerable communities are exposed to industrial hazards, twice the level of other areas. This panel seeks to examine the historical dimensions of such issues.
Download further information >>
Saturday, 8 September 2007
Conference announcement
All Our Futures. Education for sustainable futures.
8-11 September 2008, University of Plymouth
There is increasingly abundant and convergent evidence from climate change scientists that human-induced global heating is irreversible in the foreseeable future and that, at best, a narrowing window of opportunity remains for warding off the most cataclysmic impacts on the planetary and human condition.
The aim of the conference will be to explore, in this context, how to shape and deliver an anticipatory education for sustainable futures. All aspects and levels of education will be on the conference agenda; but there will be particular emphasis on the contribution to be made by the universities and other institutions of higher education.
The conference will include a range of presentations: papers, posters and workshops, together with work for exhibition and presentations in the visual and performing arts. The conference is being organised by the Centre for Sustainable Futures, University of Plymouth, in association with Kingston University, the Ecoversity, Bradford and the Higher Education Academy ESD Project.
For further information contact Jerome Satterthwaite at CSF, jsatterthwaite@plymouth.ac.uk.
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