Tag: environmental history

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).

Public environmental history by student historian, Kate Sudakova

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Historians at Bristol have posted news of an interesting public environmental history project undertaken by student Kate Sudakova.

The Great Environmental Destruction Projects of Communism explores the environmental consequences of the great industrialization of the USSR in the twentieth century, focussing in particular on the Volga River and the Caspian sturgeon.

Read the full post and find the project website here.

Frozen Empires Revisited

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Dr Adrian Howkins, Reader in Environmental History (Bristol), reflects on the new paperback edition of his book, Frozen Empires.

The recent release of the paperback edition of Frozen Empires: An Environmental History of the Antarctic Peninsula, offers an opportunity to revisit the arguments I made in this book and reflect on how it continues to shape my work in Antarctica and thinking about environmental history.  The book sets out to frame the mid-twentieth century Antarctic sovereignty dispute among Argentina, Britain, and Chile as an environmental history of decolonization.  Through a strategy I refer to as asserting ‘environmental authority’, Britain used the performance of scientific research and the production of useful knowledge to support its imperial claims to the region as a territory known as the ‘Falkland Islands Dependencies’.  Argentina and Chile both contested Britain’s claim, and put forward their own assertations to sovereignty based on a sense that this was their environment as a result of proximity, geological contiguity, and shared climate and ecosystems.  In the contest between British assertions of environmental authority and Argentine and Chilean ‘environmental nationalism’ it was the imperial, scientific vision of the environment that largely won out.  There was no genuine decolonization of the Antarctic Peninsula region, or the Antarctic continent more generally.  Instead, the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which remains in force today, retains pre-existing sovereignty claims in a state of suspended animation (‘frozen’ in the pun of the treaty negotiators) and perpetuates the close connection between science and politics across the Antarctic Continent. 

Much of my work since researching and writing Frozen Empires has focused on the history of the McMurdo Dry Valleys on the opposite side of the Antarctic continent.  I am a co-PI on a US National Science Foundation funded Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project, collaborating with scientists to ask how historical research might inform our understanding of this unique place.  The McMurdo Dry Valleys are the largest predominantly ice-free region of Antarctica and since the late 1950s have become an important site of Antarctic science.  Geologists are attracted to the Dry Valleys by the exposed rock, geomorphologists by the opportunity to study the glaciological history of the continent, and ecologists by the presence of microscopic ecosystems.  The close connection between politics and science that I identified in the Antarctic Peninsula is also applicable to the history of the McMurdo Dry Valleys.  The two most active countries in the region, New Zealand and the United States, can both be seen as making assertions of environmental authority to support their political position.  A major difference is that now I find myself on the inside of this system, working with scientists to help produce the ‘useful information’ that is being used for political purposes.

Working as more of an insider in a system I critiqued in Frozen Empires raises a number of awkward questions.  Can I retain a critical distance?  Am I contributing to the perpetuation of an unequal system?  What might the decolonization of Antarctic research look like?  These questions are not easy to answer.  Not infrequently I find myself looking back on the lack of inhibition I felt while researching and writing Frozen Empires and wishing for something similar in my current research.  Academic collaboration by definition leads to entanglements, and these entanglements increase complexity.  It is much easier, for example, to write critically about the imperial history of Antarctica than to convince scientific colleagues that this imperial history continues to have an impact on contemporary scientific research. 

But for all the messiness and difficulties involved in collaboration, there are also tremendous opportunities.  I have learned a lot about how science gets done through working with the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER site, and I have learned about working as part of an academic team.  Place-based studies offers an ideal opportunity for interdisciplinary research, and I think it is vital to have humanities perspectives represented in these collaborations.  It takes time – often more time than expected – for effective collaborations to develop, and this process involves a significant degree of mutual learning.  Researching and writing Frozen Empires fundamentally shaped what I bring to the table as an environmental historian in the McMurdo Dry Valleys project, and I remain convinced by its argument for imperial continuity.  But the process of engaging in collaborative research has unsettled at least some of my earlier positions, and the book I’m writing on the history of the McMurdo Dry Valleys will likely be quite different to Frozen Empires. 

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Header image: American base at Stonington Island, by Mark Sykes at Wikimedia Commons

Dark-dwellers as more-than-human misfits: a new synthesis of disability studies, environmental history and histories of human-animal relations

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Dr Andy Flack, lecturer in the Department of Historical Studies, writes about his new AHRC Leadership Fellowship project.

There are at least a billion people on this planet today who are directly affected by disability, and many more besides when their families, friends, and colleagues are taken into consideration. Disability – and the structures that create it – really matters. It may be marginalized, but it is hardly a minority experience. As disability studies scholars have compellingly illustrated, the concept of disability is underpinned by a range of assumptions about the form and function of bodies – the ‘normal’, ‘able’, and their opposites – and the world these ‘misfitting’ bodies inhabit. Such assumptions are always a matter of perspective and they have histories of their own. They reflect value systems which, historically, have had profound material effects, generating and entrenching maginalisation.

This project investigates whether these historically contingent value systems transcend the human world and proposes that historians need to pay attention to the broadest application of concepts relating to disability such as ‘ability’, ‘normativity’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘adaptation’ and to the material impacts of such classifications on bodies and the worlds that they inhabit. They need to understand how dominant groups – in this case human beings – imagined and dealt with all kinds of ‘differently-abled’, bodies that appeared to inhabit the world in strange and incongruous ways. In sum, they need to ask new questions of the past in order to better understand the discursive foundations of disability as an imposed identity and the allied impacts of those systems on living beings.

Through this leadership fellowship I will develop an agenda for future interrogations of disability’s intersection with environmental history and histories of human-animal relations. To do this, this project focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and North American natural history discourses relating to animals adapted to living and seeing in the dark. These are the creatures who spend most of their lives beyond our sight and living in ways that we struggle to comprehend. The period 1840-2000 captures key moments in the emergence and development of natural historical knowledge relating to these kinds of animals. Indeed, over its course, there have been far-reaching transformations, not only in the imagination and classification of diverse bodies but also in terms of human impacts on their shrouded worlds. Their strange, perplexing, non-normative bodies were frequently branded as ‘broken’, ‘degenerate’, or, indeed, ‘super’; attitudes that reveal changing norms and transforming valuations of ability and judgements about what it means to be ‘normal’.

adam-bixby-pLsphJKrAkk-unsplash
Image: Adam Bixby via unsplash

 

Animals living in the world’s darkest environments, from deep underground to the oceanic abyss, were imagined in the British and North American contexts – and across both scientific and popular contexts – as extreme others, inhabiting the margins of the world and knowing it in ways which rendered them ‘non-normative’, often ‘extraordinary’, beings whose otherness made them enchanting, even seemingly other-worldly. Such ‘differently-abled’ others were subjected to an array of assumptions and, later, wide ranging studies aimed at understanding how their bodies worked and how they survived and flourished in their dark worlds.

Conceptualizations of echolocating bats are an illustrative case in point. During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, natural philosophers sought to understand the ‘otherworldly’ nighttime navigations of these creatures via gruesome laboratory experiments on their perplexing bodies. Torturing many hundreds of bats, eyes were gouged out with red hot needles and ears blocked with starch before their capacity to navigate in the dark was put to the test to identify and understand their ‘special’ sensory abilities. Such an interrogation of bat sensory capacity broke with an historical tradition of dismissing the creatures as quite literally blind, even ‘broken’; Natural history writer Thomas Bewick’s view at the end of the eighteenth century was that bats were, in consequence, ‘imperfect’ animals.

[image2] AF AHRC post
from Thomas Bewick’s A general history of quadrupeds (1824) via Biodiversity Heritage Library

Narratives of deficiency and exceptionalism characterise historical British and North American comprehensions, not only of echolocating bats, but also of many dark-dwelling species. By the middle of the twentieth century, as the senses required for life in the dark had become better understood – including Donald Griffin’s detection of bat echolocation in 1938 – dark-dwellers had been drawn from the margins towards the mainstream of British and North American comprehensions of nature’s diversity. At the same time, however, and perhaps ironically, writers across scientific and popular publications began noting that many of these creatures were becoming increasingly marginalised by the anthropogenic environmental transformations of modernity, including the illumination of darkness, the construction of transport infrastructures and, most recently, the cascading effects of climate change. Consequently, the imagination of these animals transformed: they came to be construed not only as ‘differently-abled’, but also as ‘vulnerable’, ‘adaptable’, and ‘resilient’. Such adjectives are profoundly familiar to people living with disability in the world today.

In building a history of difference through a case study that transcends an exclusively human world, this highly innovative research project places the nonhuman world at the heart of an analytical framework and historical methodology that excavates familiar source materials for the wide-ranging discursive structures that underpin the modern concept of disability:  ability, normalcy, vulnerability and adaptation.

The resulting ‘beyond-the-human’ reconceptualization of the meaning of these categories widens historical appreciation of the discourses that generate and perpetuate disability. In the process, I will produce a suite of publications that enable me to set a stimulating agenda for further research. Crucially, I will also ask challenging questions about how this research might apply to diverse communities beyond the academy. Through the development of innovative impact activities focused on key stakeholders – Key Stage 2 children, teachers, sight-impaired individuals and vision clinicians – I seek to transform understandings of diversity, ability, and disability in important and radical ways.

 

[image1] AF AHRC postDr Andy Flack is a lecturer in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Bristol. He is an animal and environmental historian, working primarily on human engagements with the non-human animal world across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His first book, The Wild Within: Histories of a Landmark British Zoo was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2018.

 

Header image: Clément Falize via unsplash