The selection committee for the Joel Tarr Envirotech Article Prize is pleased to announce this year’s winner:

Bill Rankin, “The Accuracy Trap: The Values and Meaning of Algorithmic Mapping, from Mineral Extraction to Climate Change,” Environment and History (published online August 23, 2020), https://doi.org/10.3197/096734020X15900760737275.

How are environmental maps created, and what do they mean? Bill Rankin’s compelling article focuses on a fundamental but easily overlooked component of environmental mapping: the underlying algorithm. Weaving together insights from environmental history, visual studies, and critical cartography, Rankin traces the development and spread of now-ubiquitous mapping algorithms from their Cold War origins in the fields of mineral extraction (in postcolonial Africa) and military weather forecasting (in the USSR). Although their use was limited at first, such algorithms sparked intense philosophical disagreement among specialists over the goals of environmental visualization – between what Rankin calls accuracy and realism. However, epistemological tensions around the purpose of visualization have largely been forgotten as advances in computing made algorithms more accessible to non-specialists. In an increasing retreat from human subjectivity, mapping has become a technique of data-processing, hollowing out the meaning of accuracy. By probing the limits and possibilities of accuracy in environmental mapping, Rankin offers a welcome reminder of the contingent and contested nature of visual representation, and a model for linking the histories of environment and technology to questions of epistemology and visual culture.

Tarr Prize Selection Committee:
Camille Cole, University of Cambridge
David Fedman, University of California-Irvine
Aristotle Tympas, University of Athens

In light of the virtualization of our interactions over the coming year, the Envirotech SIG invites applications from graduate students, recent PhDs (within three years), and independent scholars for the position of Envirotech Communications Fellow for the 2020-2021 academic year (August-June).

The fellowship includes an honorarium of $800 and entails maintaining the Envirotech website and Twitter account and possibly assisting with the organization of virtual panels and other online events, in collaboration with the Envirotech conveners. Experience with WordPress is helpful but not required.

We anticipate a time commitment of 1-2 hours per week over the 2020-2021 academic year. Applicants should send a CV and brief statement of interest to ebenson@upenn.edu and jpbaeten@iu.edu. Application deadline is July 15, 2020.

The Envirotech Special Interest Group is pleased to announce the Joy Parr Envirotech Travel Award for the upcoming American Society for Environmental History conference.

The Joy Parr Envirotech travel award is a grant of $400 toward the costs of attending the annual meetings of the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) and the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). The award is named in honor of the eminent Canadian historian of work, gender, and technology Joy Parr.

Eligibility for the award is limited to those presenting a paper or poster at the meeting addressing the interrelated histories of environment and technology. The grant is available to current graduate students, recent PhDs (within the past three years) and independent scholars. The winner will receive a check for $400 at the Envirotech breakfast meeting at the conference.

Applicants should complete the linked questionnaire and email it along with a 1-page CV to envirotechtravelaward@gmail.com.

Applications for the travel grant for the upcoming ASEH conference in Ottawa, Canada, from March 25-29, 2020, are due by January 31, 2020. The applicant selected for the award will be notified by mid-February.

Any questions can be sent to Envirotech co-conveners Etienne Benson and John Baeten at the above email address. For more information about Envirotech, visit our website at http://envirotechhistory.org/

Envirotech is now on Twitter! Follow @EnvirotechHist to keep up-to-date on Envirotech SIG news and other conversations at the intersection of environment, technology, and history.

The selection committee for the Joel Tarr Envirotech Article Prize is pleased to announce this year’s winner:

David Fedman, “The Ondol Problem and the Politics of Forest Conservation in Colonial Korea,” Journal of Korean Studies 23, no. 1 (March 2018), DOI 10.1215/21581665-4339053

Focusing on the ondol — the cooking stove-cum-heated floor system common in traditional Korean dwellings — David Fedman’s compelling article introduces readers to a little-studied technology whose history has broad implications for our understanding of the intersection of technology, environment, and identity. With the help of an impressive array of Japanese and Korean sources, Fedman shows that the ondol was a critical node in early-twentieth-century discussions about domestic energy efficiency, forest conservation, and the differences in culture and character that supposedly separated Koreans from their Japanese colonizers. The ondol’s legions of early-twentieth-century critics accused it both of wasting valuable timber and of encouraging indolence, but such criticisms did not lead to its abolishment. Instead, the article demonstrates, they drove forestry officials and others to encourage various methods of fuel conservation, some of which involved fundamental changes to the way Koreans designed their homes and prepared their meals. By combining the histories of technology, environment, and colonialism in innovative ways, Fedman’s examination of the ondol offers a model for scholarship linking quotidian technologies within the home to environments beyond it.

Tarr Prize Selection Committee:
Etienne Benson, University of Pennsylvania
Camille Cole, Yale University
Aleksandra Kobiljski, CNRS