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Dark Ecologies: Art and Poetry at Nightfall

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Join environmental historians Andy Flack and Alice Would, Bristol City Poet Caleb Parkin and audio-visual artist Kathy Hinde to explore darkness in their work and its connection to the more-than-human.

Tuesday 14th June 7.30 – 9.30pm. Glass Studio, St George’s, Bristol.

TICKETS HERE

Andy and Alice’s research focuses on how attitudes to night-time have changed over the past several centuries, and the ways in which people have imagined what it means to be nocturnal.

Kathy’s work grows from a partnership between nature and technology expressed through installations and performances. Her work, shown internationally, offers poetic and reflective experiences that invite a heightened awareness of the world around us.

Caleb’s debut collection, This Fruiting Body (Nine Arches Press), morphs “human and more-than-human bodies in a post-human lyric disco lit with ecological thought” (Samantha Walton). It’s a playful invitation to a queer ecopoetics that permeates our bodies and speech, our gardens, homes, and city suburbs.

There’ll be opportunities to interact and talk about human and more-than-human experiences of night-time before Caleb and Kathy share work which explores these themes. We’ll encounter darkness, literal and metaphorical, with opportunities to ask questions. Then, the chance to move outside as night falls, discovering and – possibly – exceeding our human senses.

Doors open at 7:30pm for drinks and discussion, talks begin at 8:30pm.

£5 is our recommended price for this event. If this feels affordable and right for you then paying the recommended price will help us cover our costs.

There are limited number of tickets available for this session, please let us know if you are no longer able to attend: festival@bnhc.org.uk

This activity is taking place as part of the Festival of Nature 2022: https://www.bnhc.org.uk/festival-of-nature/events/

Dr Joan Passey is an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker for 2022

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Dr Joan Passey (English, University of Bristol) has been named as one of ten AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinkers for 2022.

Every year, BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) hold a nationwide search for academics with new ideas that will resonate with a wider audience. These New Generation Thinkers represent some of the brightest scholars in the country and their research has the potential to redefine our understanding of an array of topics, from our history to the way we speak.

The New Generation Thinkers will have the prestigious opportunity to communicate their research by making programmes for BBC Radio 3. They will also be provided with unique access to training and support from AHRC and the BBC. New Generation Thinkers alumni have gone on to become prominent public figures in their fields, as well as the face of major documentaries, TV series, and regular figures in public debate.

Dr Passey will work on programmes around the theme of ‘Splish, splash, splosh: the sound of the sea’.

When Charles Babbage, father of the computer, looked to the sea he imagined its churning waves storing sounds and broadcasting them back. When Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne stood upon Cornish cliffs he heard in the crashing waves the sounds of an Arthurian battle – an echo from 400 years before. Joan Passey’s essay considers our relationship with water, from coastal foghorns to the “dead zones” where sound fails to travel, to the noise pollution destroying ecosystems.

The academics taking part in the scheme were chosen after a four-month selection process, including a series of day-long workshops. They have undergone training and development with the AHRC and will spend a year being mentored by producers from Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme, where they will appear to take part in discussions about a wide range of topics throughout the year. They will also be working on episodes of The Essay to be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 next spring.

Dr Joan Passey is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Bristol and is the CEH’s events officer. Her webpage is joanpassey.com.

Roundup of opportunities received this week

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We receive notifications of environmental humanities events and opportunities, and want to share a few we have received in the past couple of weeks.

New Master’s Program “Environment and Society” (RCC, LMU Munich)

CfA: Doctoral Candidate Positions (4 years): “Learning ‘Nature’: A Cross-Cultural Ethnography of Children’s Relationships to the Non-Human World” (RCC, LMU Munich)

Intensive Summer School: Environment and Society in Turkish and Global Contexts (Ibn Haldun University & Penn State University, in Istanbul)

New Master’s Program “Environment and Society” (RCC, LMU Munich)

The Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) at LMU Munich invites applications for its master’s program “Environment and Society,” which will start in winter 2022/23. The program is designed to equip students concerned about human impact on the planet with the interdisciplinary knowledge and humanistic understanding that practitioners and scholars need to tackle key social and environmental challenges in constructive ways ensuring sustainable and just futures for all. Further information about the program can be found on its website. The application deadline for the Winter Semester 2022/2023 start is 31 May 2022.

For prospective students interested in learning more about the MA “Environment and Society” and its application process, the program’s coordinators are offering two information sessions during this year’s application period. Each of these meetings will provide more detailed information about the MA and the application process, as well as include short Q&A sessions during which prospective students may ask questions of the program’s coordinators.

Registration for the info sessions is free but required. The dates and links to register for attendance are listed below:

Info Session 1: 13 April 2022, 11:00 CET (GMT+1), register here.

Info Session 2: 5 May 2022, 16:00 CET (GMT+1), register here.

Questions about the program or the application process may also be directed at envhum@rcc.lmu.de.

CfA: Doctoral Candidate Positions (4 years): “Learning ‘Nature’: A Cross-Cultural Ethnography of Children’s Relationships to the Non-Human World” (RCC, LMU Munich)

The Volkswagen Foundation “Freigeist” Research Group “Learning ‘Nature’: A Cross-Cultural Ethnography of Children’s Relationships to the Non-Human World” invites applications for two funded doctoral positions (salary group TV-L 13, 65%, 4 years, additional funds for field research available). Deadline is 15 May 2022.

The doctoral candidate will research how cultural practices of socialization shape children’s understandings of the nonhuman world and reproduce specific modes of interacting with the environment. Possible research focuses include children’s morality, children’s relationship with “nature,” children interactions with nonhumans, ecological pedagogies, etc. Preference will be given to candidates who plan to undertake their fieldwork in intentional/utopian communities with a strong focus on ecological or pedagogical issues. The candidate is expected to carry out one year of ethnographic field research and to be fluent in the language of the field site. The candidate is also expected to conduct independently their original research project within the general themes of the project. A master’s degree in the social sciences is required (social anthropology, psychology, education, environmental studies, etc.). The successful applicant will actively contribute to project team activities, together with the PI and the postdoc, such as reading groups and the organization of workshops. Experience in interdisciplinary research is a plus.

Disciplinarily grounded in anthropology, with methodological and analytical inputs from developmental psychology and linguistic anthropology, the research group investigates how understandings of and interactions with the nonhuman world are shaped by early, culturally-specific socialization practices. The project looks at how different socialization practices give rise to distinctive phenomenological and moral experiences of nature and the nonhuman world and how such experiences have an impact on the ways in which the environment is conceptualized and lived. The broader scope of this project is to lay the groundwork for a better appreciation of culturally-specific processes of learning about the nonhuman world and to gain practical insights that can inform educational interventions. Each member of the research team will focus on one particular case study and will independently conduct research, but the project includes periods of collaboration to foster connections, consistency, and comparison. Potential candidates are invited to suggest a specific research focus and field site that can contribute to the overall goals of the project.

The Learning “Nature” Research Group is based at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC), a joint initiative of Ludwig Maximilian University Munich and the Deutsches Museum. The RCC is the largest Center for Advanced Study in the environmental humanities worldwide and hosts numerous international scholars working on environmental topics. The doctoral candidate will be based in Munich and affiliated with the doctoral program in Environment and Society at the RCC. The doctoral candidate will engage with and profit from the RCC’s lively research community, its regular Colloquia series and workshops, as well as interactions with scholars working across the environmental humanities.

Please submit your application by 15 May 2022 as a single PDF to francesca.mezzenzana@rcc.lmu.de with the subject: Freigeist PhD position.

The following documents are required:

  • An academic curriculum vitae (including publications and awards, if applicable);
  • A letter of motivation in which you summarise a) your experience and interests; b) why you are applying for this position; and c) why you are the best candidate (2 pages max);
  • A project outline detailing the proposed regional case study as well as a sketch of how you would address the topic theoretically and methodologically (2 pages max);
  • Your master’s thesis (if in a language other than English, please provide a table of contents and a summary of max. 5 pages in English)
  • The names and contact information of two academic referees (NB: these will only be contacted if you are shortlisted).

Interviews for the position will be held in late May/June 2022. The position will begin in October 2022 at the earliest.

For applicants unfamiliar with the German academic system, a TV-L 13 65% position provides a liveable salary, full tuition, and benefits including full healthcare, pension contributions, six weeks paid vacation, and parental leave (if required). As the candidate will be a state employee, they are required to have German health insurance and to make contributions to the German tax and social welfare system. Please note that knowledge of German language is not required for this position. Working hours are flexible, and the RCC offers a family-friendly working environment. The RCC can also assist, if necessary, with work permits and visas. We especially seek applications from qualified individuals with disabilities and welcome applications from women.

For further information and questions regarding the position, please contact the PI Dr. Francesca Mezzenzana (francesca.mezzenzana@rcc.lmu.de).

Click here to download pdf.

Intensive Summer School: Environment and Society in Turkish and Global Contexts (Ibn Haldun University & Penn State University, in Istanbul)

The departments of history at Ibn Haldun University and Penn State University are happy to announce an intensive summer school on environmental history titled, “Environment and Society in Turkish and Global Contexts.”

An Intensive Summer School on Environment and Society in Turkish and Global Contexts, June 13-24, 2022, Süleymaniye Complex, Istanbul

The departments of history at Ibn Haldun University and Penn State University are happy to announce an intensive summer school on environmental history titled, “Environment and Society in Turkish and Global Contexts.”

The program will run for two weeks and is comprised of lectures, discussion sessions, and field trips around the historic capital Istanbul. It will feature some of the most prominent figures in the field, including:

  • Halil Berktay (Ibn Haldun University, Turkey)
  • Lisa Brady (Boise State University, USA)
  • Suraiya Faroqhi (Ibn Haldun University, Turkey)
  • John R. McNeill (Georgetown University, USA)
  • Julia Adeney Thomas (Notre Dame University, USA)

The program will be held at the iconic Süleymaniye Complex, built in the middle of the sixteenth century by Sultan Süleyman I.

Tuition: $400 (includes lunches, tea/coffee, and field trips)

Seats are limited to 20 people

Application: To apply, please submit your CV and a short letter of interest to summerschool@ihu.edu.tr

Timeline:

  • Application deadline: April 15, 2022
  • Decision notification: April 22, 2022
  • Program dates: June 13-24, 2022

If you have questions about the program and housing recommendations, please feel free to e-mail the IHU Summer School Deputy Directorate at summerschool@ihu.edu.tr

Organized by Fatih Çalışır (Ibn Haldun University) and Faisal Husain (Penn State University).

Cardiff ScienceHumanities Summer School: Energies

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The Cardiff ScienceHumanities Summer School, now in its third year, is in-person this June on the theme of Energies with talks from fabulous scholars on nuclear, extractions, and renewables. There will be a keynote from the brilliant Prof. Graeme MacDonald (Warwick). Applications open to UK and international postgrads and newly-minted postdocs.  

More info via the ScienceHumanities website or by emailing Prof. Martin Willis at: willism8@cardiff.ac.uk 

The lead-in time for the Summer School has been reduced this year to try to mitigate any changes due to alterations in covid rules. There are just a few days left to apply: please email Martin Willis to express interest and request an application form, which will be due by 8th April.  

We will look forward to hearing from you! 

Cardiff ScienceHumanities 

Finding Shackleton’s ship: why our fascination with Antarctica endures

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Adrian Howkins, University of Bristol

The discovery of Ernest Shackleton’s ship the Endurance in pristine condition at the bottom of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea was one of the few good news stories this month.

It marked the coming together of modern stories of technological and logistical achievement with older tales of exploration and struggle. Located 3,000 metres down, 107 years after it was crushed by ice, finding the Endurance was a significant moment in polar history.

As a result of his egalitarian leadership style and the fact he “never lost a man”, Ernest Shackleton is one of the most admired explorers of Antarctica’s “heroic age”. This spanned a 20-year period of intense exploration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that became most famous for the race to the South Pole between Britain’s Captain Robert Scott and Norway’s Roald Amundsen in the summer of 1911.

Shackleton’s Endurance expedition set out in 1914 with the goal of becoming the first to cross the whole continent, but the loss of his ship led instead to a desperate struggle for survival. Stories of polar exploration have always captured the popular imagination, but what are the implications of this enduring fascination?

Obstacles, goals and distractions

The extreme environment of Antarctica features prominently in the story of the search for the Endurance, as the Weddell Sea is notoriously dangerous for shipping. The use of state-of-the-art technology adds an extra layer of interest, and the striking images produced by the expedition immediately transport us to this distant, murky, undersea world.

In the current tense geopolitical environment, there is something reassuringly optimistic about the search for the Endurance: a classic narrative of overcoming serious obstacles to achieve a spectacular goal.

A similar sense also helps to explain the excitement generated by the heroic age of Antarctic exploration in the early 20th century, much in the way space exploration excites people now. When the Endurance set sail for Antarctica from London in 1914, this too was a time of geopolitical tension, with imperial rivalries escalating into the first world war.

The expedition was given instructions to proceed because the government thought the Antarctic adventure would serve as a morale-boosting distraction. But when his ship became stuck in the ice and then sank, Shackleton’s original goal of crossing the continent gave way to the simple desire to stay alive.

Heroes, problems and challenges

While there is much to celebrate in the exploits of polar explorers, the enduring fascination with polar exploration also poses some challenges. A tendency to focus on the heroic age over all other periods of Antarctic history means that other interesting episodes are frequently overlooked. Just because Antarctic exploration served as a distraction from the complexities of imperial politics, for example, does not mean that the continent has stood outside wider imperial history.

In the early 20th century, Britain drew upon the exploits of its polar explorers and scientists in making its sovereignty claim to the Falkland Islands Dependencies, known today as the British Antarctic Territory. Assertions of sovereignty made by 19th century British explorers and whalers helped to justify the British claim in international law.

The 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which functions as the overarching governing mechanism in the region, perpetuates the connection between science and politics by requiring a country to conduct substantial scientific research on the continent before it can be admitted as a full consultative member.

The number of consulative parties has increased from 12 to 29 today, with an additional 25 non-consultative parties having the right to attend meetings but not particpate in decision making. Taking a broader perspective not only widens an appreciation for the history of Antarctica, but can also add depth and nuance to the history of exploration.

Polar exploration also tends to be a history without much diversity. A single expedition from Japan broke the near monopoly of white male explorers during Antarctica’s heroic age. While not surprising for the early 20th century, this lack of diversity raises important questions about who is included and who is excluded from heroic age narratives – and who benefits from the ongoing interest. If you can’t see yourself reflected in those who feature in prominent stories about Antarctica, it may be harder to make an emotional connection to the continent and want to pursue a career there, for example.

The same goes for women and the contribution they have made to polar exploration over the last century. Very little is heard of their work and endeavours. Visiting Antarctica over the past few years, I have seen a growing gender balance in polar science. But the prominence of groups of white men in the publicity photographs of the Endurance search expedition gives the impression that not much has changed over the past century.

Another potential problem of the ongoing interest in exploration and adventure is that it tends to set up a relationship of conflict between humans and the non-human natural world. This is rarely binary, and explorers often demonstrate a deep appreciation for the polar environment.

But at the heart of interest in Antarctica during the heroic age was a desire to demonstrate individual and national prowess through the conquest of nature. Viewed from this perspective, interest in the heroic age might be seen as perpetuating the attitudes of control and dominance over the natural world that have contributed to our current environmental crisis.

A sepia photograph of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.
Ernest Shackleton. Olga Popova/Shutterstock

The finding of the Endurance is a welcome reminder of Shackleton’s incredible story of survival. But we need to start thinking a little more critically about the values and attitudes embedded in our continuing fascination with polar exploration and adventure.

Doing more to acknowledge the gender and racial politics of the heroic era might help to start a conversation about the enduring inequalities that persist in an effort to move towards a more diverse Antarctic community, and beyond the achievements of early 20th-century white men.

Adrian Howkins, Reader in Environmental History, Department of History, University of Bristol

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

New book: Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages by Lucy Donkin

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Dr Lucy Donkin (History of Art, University of Bristol) has published a new book on holy ground in the middle ages.

Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages illuminates how the floor surface shaped the ways in which people in medieval western Europe and beyond experienced sacred spaces.

The ground beneath our feet plays a crucial, yet often overlooked, role in our relationship with the environments we inhabit and the spaces with which we interact. By focusing on this surface as a point of encounter, Lucy Donkin positions it within a series of vertically stacked layers—the earth itself, permanent and temporary floor coverings, and the bodies of the living above ground and the dead beneath—providing new perspectives on how sacred space was defined and decorated, including the veneration of holy footprints, consecration ceremonies, and the demarcation of certain places for particular activities.

Using a wide array of visual and textual sources, Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages also details ways in which interaction with this surface shaped people’s identities, whether as individuals, office holders, or members of religious communities. Gestures such as trampling and prostration, the repeated employment of specific locations, and burial beneath particular people or actions used the surface to express likeness and difference. From pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land to cathedrals, abbeys, and local parish churches across the Latin West, Donkin frames the ground as a shared surface, both a feature of diverse, distant places and subject to a variety of uses over time—while also offering a model for understanding spatial relationships in other periods, regions, and contexts.

Cornell University Press are offering a discount of 30% using the code CSVS2022 at combinedacademic.co.uk.

Call for Applications: ESEH 2022 Summer School in Environmental History

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Reposted from the ESEH:

(An-)Hydrous Environments: Rethinking Water in Environmental History

ESEH 2022 Summer School in Environmental History
University of Bristol, United Kingdom
10-13 July 2022

The Department of History at the University of Bristol with the support of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) and the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership are pleased to announce a four-day graduate school in environmental history hosted at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. The summer school will follow the ESEH biannual conference in Bristol (4-8 July 2022) to offer intermediate to advanced graduate students the opportunity to present and discuss their work, to network with other researchers from across the world, and to experience and learn from the environments and technologies around Bristol.

The ESEH 2022 graduate school (An-)Hydrous Environments will explore the interrelationship between water and human society with monitoring the impacts of water on past environments and societies, and that of human society on waters. Relating to the environments at Bristol, the summer school will focus in particular on how societies have lived with, utilised and changed natural water bodies by means of technologies, management practices, and governance. At the same time, it will also explore the agency of the sea and its beings itself, allowing for more-than-human approaches within the broader blue humanities. In the summer school we will furthermore be looking for specific approaches and methods that could be useful for all of us who work with water-related issues, and explicitly aim to broaden water history to other states of matter, such as fog, precipitation, and frozen seas. We will discuss the diverse entanglements of water, societies, and technologies, with the aim to rethink water in environmental history.

The topic’s position at the intersection of environmental history, history of science and technology, and blue humanities, encourages to discuss, but is not limited to, issues such as:

• Environmental histories of seas, rivers, shorelines, and wetlands
• Utilisation of water resources and its technologies (e.g. energy, infrastructures)
• Governance of water supply, water resources, and water environments, incl. hydro-colonialism
• Management and mitigation practices
• Short- and long-term hydro-morphological changes (natural and artificial) and their impact on perception, law, and management
• Absences and abundances of water
• Public memory and socio-cultural perceptions (e.g. cultural practices, religion, climate extremes)
• Water bodies and water in bodies
• Agency of the sea and more-than-human agency of water bodies

The summer school is meant to be broad and inclusive in terms of themes, time periods, geographic regions, and disciplines, and we welcome applications with creative approaches towards the topic. Although the primary focus of the graduate school is historical, candidates from other fields are encouraged to apply in order to foster interdisciplinary dialogue.

It aims to gather around 20 doctoral students or recent post-docs together with junior and senior scholars who will all give formal and informal presentations, as well as feedback for promoting rich methodological discussions in a friendly atmosphere. Next to the keynote lectures and discussions, practical workshops and field trips will form an integral part of the summer school.

All participants are expected to submit a draft of a chapter or an article (approx. 4-5000 words) one month before the summer school, as well as to prepare a 10-minute oral presentation for the school. Students are furthermore expected to provide constructive feedback to other presentations. The working language of the summer school is English.

Interested doctoral students and immediate post-docs working on the above topics are welcome to apply. An application for the graduate school should consist of:
1. an abstract of your presentation and outline of research topic (ca. 350 words),
2. short CV (2 pages maximum),
3. a paragraph on what you hope to get out of the summer school (ca. 150 words).

We hope to be able to provide free accommodation (in shared rooms) and lunches for accepted applicants during this four-day seminar. Travel costs will likely have to be covered by the participants themselves. Since we do not expect COVID-related restrictions this summer, we are planning this graduate school as an in-person event.

We are committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion at the ESEH Summer School, and welcome applications from underrepresented communities.

Application deadline is 1 April 2022.
Please send your application in one single document with the subject line ESEH 2022 Summer School to both Nina Vieira (ninavieira@fcsh.unl.pt) and Melina Antonia Buns (melina.a.buns@uis.no).

Organising committee:
Adrian Howkins (University of Bristol)
Nina Vieira (FCSH NOVA University of Lisbon/CHAM-Centre for the Humanities)
Aditya Ramesh (The University of Manchester)
Andrea Kiss (Vienna University of Technology)
Melina Antonia Buns (University of Stavanger)

Click HERE to download the call in pdf.

The ESEH Summer School is co-organised with the South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership and the University of Bristol.

Banner image Unsplash/Josh Withers.

Enrique Ramírez: sea thinking

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CEH co-director Paul Merchant, writes on his blog…

In early April, I spoke to the artist Enrique Ramírez, whose work returns again and again to the ocean as a source of inspiration, a place for reflection, and a material with which to make art. Ramírez was born in Santiago de Chile, but has lived and worked between Paris and Santiago since 2010.

Ramírez told me that he feels like a Chilean artist when he is outside Chile, but that when he returns to his home country, he feels like something of a tourist. This sense of displaced identity emerges in his work: much of it has to do with the particular political significance of the sea in Chile, but Ramírez also makes art that explores travel and migration across oceans, as well as ecological problems that ignore national borders.

[Read more…]

Modern British Nature Writing 1789–2020: Land Lines

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The team behind the AHRC-funded Land Lines nature writing project, and its two successful public engagement follow-on projects (Tracks, Traces, Trails: Nature Writing Beyond the Page and Tipping Points: Cultural Responses to Land Sharing in the North) are delighted to announce the release of their book, Land Lines: Modern British Nature Writing, 1789–2020 on the 17th March 2022 with Cambridge University Press.

In this new volume, authors Dr Will Abberley, Dr Christina Alt, Prof David Higgins, Prof Graham Huggan and Dr Pippa Marland move through multiple genealogies and histories of British nature writing, from the Romantics to the contemporary period. Across the four core chapters, this book responds to the many criticisms, controversies, and tropes of British nature writing, and seeks to understand our contemporary fascination with this historically significant genre of literature. Drawing on texts from Gilbert White’s monumental A Natural History of Selborne to the writing of contemporary authors such as Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Modern British Nature Writing grapples with some of the most enchanting and complex aspects of British representations of nature in literature.

The cover image of the book, titled ‘Pondering Ring Ouzel – inspired by Gilbert White’s Letter 26, 1769 (2021), is by artist Melanie Rose, an artist member of the Land Lines: Tipping Points team and a recent PhD graduate from the University of Leeds.

Abstract from Cambridge University Press

Why do we speak so much of nature today when there is so little of it left? Prompted by this question, this study offers the first full-length exploration of modern British nature writing, from the late eighteenth century to the present. Focusing on non-fictional prose writing, the book supplies new readings of classic texts by Romantic, Victorian and Contemporary authors, situating these within the context of an enduringly popular genre. Nature writing is still widely considered fundamentally celebratory or escapist, yet it is also very much in tune with the conflicts of a natural world under threat. The book’s five authors connect these conflicts to the triple historical crisis of the environment; of representation; and of modern dissociated sensibility. This book offers an informed critical approach to modern British nature writing for specialist readers, as well as a valuable guide for general readers concerned by an increasingly diminished natural world.

Endorsements

‘A thought-provoking, sensitive, and rigorous survey of nature writing old and new, placing the genre in its historical, social, cultural, and above all contemporary contexts. Hugely relevant to anyone who cares about how we write about and respond to the natural world, in the Age of the Anthropocene.’

Stephen Moss, Bath Spa University

‘This is an exhilarating book that dispels clichés, using detailed enquiry to ask essential, tough questions about how environmental writing challenges barriers associated with gender, class, and species.’

Susan Oliver, University of Essex

‘The best nature writers discern relationships between observed and observer, human and “nature”. This terrific study shows writers delighting in and responding to each other through their common goals in a changing world. A thoroughly authoritative survey, Modern British Nature Writing, 1789–2020 questions and situates both particular writers and the genre itself.’

Ralph Pite, University of Bristol

Learn more about the Land Lines project here:

www.landlinesproject.wordpress.com

www.twitter.com/LandLinesNature

www.facebook.com/LandLinesNature

Water Works: The Arts of Water Management, 1500–1800

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Call for Papers

Institute of Humanities, Northumbria University, 22 June 2022

At a time of environmental crisis, studying histories of the manipulation of natural resources has never been more important. While our ancestors used different terms to talk of such matters, they engaged with (or stridently disengaged from) the same questions.

This symposium, which has been generously supported by the Institute of Humanities at Northumbria University, aims to draw together expertise from across disciplines to engage with managed and mechanical water systems in the period 1500–1800. Our focus for this multidisciplinary symposium is on how humans have sought to make water work for them—for not only practical but also artistic purposes.

While water’s centrality to life has long made it a rich source for metaphor and symbolism, Thomas Willard notes that the period between 1500 and 1800 ‘saw a breakthrough in the understanding of water: what it was and how it blended with other substances to form waters of great variety’ (‘Testing the Waters’ in Classen, ed., 2015). Engineered and managed water, however, has not garnered as much attention as other varieties of water. The growing focus on the ‘blue humanities’ has tended to prioritise certain ‘natural’ waters and their human and non-human inhabitants, especially saltwater environments (Brayton, Shakespeare’s Ocean, 2012; Mentz, Shipwreck Modernity, 2015). Yet recent studies (Mukherji, Impossible Engineering, 2009; Ash, The Draining of the Fens, 2017) have shown the potential for interdisciplinary study of managed or mechanical water systems (drainage and irrigation, sewer pipes and sophisticated hydraulics, wells and fountains). This symposium builds on this growing body of early modern scholarship to explore early modern responses to managed water.

We hope that this symposium will create new dialogues with water experts across disciplines, and would welcome proposals for exploratory papers on topics including but not limited to:

  •  Regulation, water law
  •  Flood mitigation
  •  Water power
  •  Recreation and tourism
  •  Health, bathing, sanitation
  •  Waterscaping (prints, plans, designs)
  •  Water systems, hydraulics
  •  Practical and ornamental works
  •  Wasted water
  •  Creative and instructive texts
  •  Gardens, fens, canals, cities
  •  Religion and ritual
  •  Heritage and digital resources

We envisage this symposium as the first step in developing a journal special issue, and plan to build towards this further by hosting a panel (or panels) leading out of the symposium at the ASLE-UKI conference (6–8 September 2022).

Proposals for 20 minute papers should be sent to Dr Rosamund Paice by Friday 31 March 2022, 5pm GMT.