We have had very few submissions of news and other items lately. Please send me an email (or even better, register on the web site and post it yourself!) if you have anything relevant you want to share. This can be member updates, conference news and notes, new books, etc.

The Envirotech web site contains a section called “Envirotech Resources”, which is mostly based on old discussions from the mailing list. We plan to collaboratively overhaul this section (with envirotech-relevant essays, links, multimedia, publications, syllabi, excursions, novels, archives, etc.) over the next few years. We plan to have one of these topics as the theme for each of the two annual newsletters,. I, as the editor, will also solicit submissions from envirotechies.

For the Fall 2008 newsletter, I want to focus on Envirotech Syllabi. I know many of you have taught (or followed) courses on environment and technology. Please send me syllabi or share your experiences with teaching envirotech courses as comments below.

Currently, we only have 3 syllabi on the web page – you can see them here: http://envirotechhistory.org/envirotech-resources/syllabi/

Envirotech, a dynamic young interest group within the Society for the History of Technology and the American Society for Environmental History, invites nominations for the Envirotech Prize for Best Article on the Inter­play between Technology and the Environment from the past three years.  The Envirotech Prize recognizes the best essay, including both journal articles and book chapters, on the relationship between technology and the environment in history.  To be eligible the essay must be published between January 1, 2006, and June 1, 2008.  The prize committee is particularly seeking innovative publications that explore new ways of thinking about the interplay between technological systems and the natural environment.  Articles in any language are welcome, but applicants will need to provide a translation of non-English articles.  More junior scholars are especially encouraged to submit their publications.

The Envirotech Prize carries a cash award of $250 and will be conferred at the conference of the Society for the History of Technology in Lisbon, Portugal, October 11-14, 2008.  The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2008.  Self-nomination is encouraged.

Please send one copy of your article and a brief curriculum vitae to each of the committee members via either post or e-mail:

Timothy J. LeCain
Asst. Professor of History
Department of History & Philosophy
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59718
E-mail: tlecain@montana.edu

Dolly Jorgensen
Post-doctoral researcher
Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture
NTNU – Dragvoll
7491 Trondheim
Norway
E-mail: dolly@jorgensenweb.net

Martha B. Lance, Ph.D
History Department
Plattsburgh State University
101 Broad Street
Plattsburgh, NY 12901
lancemb@plattsburgh.edu

The Envirotech meeting at the ASEH conference in Boise will be a ninety-minute lunch meeting rather than a breakfast meeting. (The conference organizers wanted groups to have time for more substantial discussion than usual.) So the plan is to have a topic, maybe even a specific set of questions, ready for people to discuss over lunch.

But what topic? In the program, we indicate that the discussion would be on issues associated with using an “envirotech” approach to teaching and research. So we now have to narrow that topic to a more specific discussion question—and we welcome ideas. Please add a comment or suggestion below as to what you think might be useful/possible to discuss over lunch. A main goal, of course, is to facilitate conversation/discussion at the lunch meeting.

This request is, in part, a test of this website’s ability to receive comments on various news items, so please try adding a comment. And if you are planning to attend, don’t forget to register for the conference and to sign up for the Envirotech lunch on the registration form. (The early registration deadline is Feb. 15.) We’re looking forward to seeing you in Boise.

Hugh Gorman and Ann Greene

As you may have noticed, the Envirotech Newsletter does now have a new format: from now on, all news items will be posted on the web page as they are submitted to the new newsletter editor at news@envirotechhistory.org. We will send out newsletters like this email twice a year to summarize all news posts.

If you visit the web page at http://www.envirotechhistory.org/ you will find many new improvements, such as the possibility to post comments and start discussions of news items, options to post your own news items, RSS feeds of new posts, a calendar of upcoming events, as well as a brand new look.

Please let me know how this new format works for you – all comments regarding the web page and this email are welcome!

Thanks,
Finn Arne Jørgensen

List of recent posts to the Envirotech web site

News Items

• Lost in Transcription
• Sharing Waters: St. Lawrence-Great Lakes – A Special Issue of Québec Studies
• A Call for Manuscripts: The University of Akron Press Series on Technology and the Environment
• WANTED: Graduate Candidate interested in Environmental Communication
• Press Release from Montana Tech
• Literary Sources relevant to Envirotechies
• Media Sources relevant to Envirotechies
• Manufactured Landscapes available for institutional sale and rental
• Solidarity, Sustainability, and Non-Violence (SSNV) Research Newsletter: If not the MDGs, then what?
• Short Films on Air Pollution
• Jeffrey Stine’s Recent Retrospective on Worster’s Dust Bowl in T&C
• Manufactured Landscapes DVD

Member News

• New envirotech PhD
• Frank Popper
• Pat Munday on SHOT Envirotech Roundtable
• Pat Munday: President Bush Grills an Endangered Species
• Honorable Mention for Book by Envirotechies
• Walker and LeCain Awarded NSF Grant: Will Compare Japanese and American Reactions to Mining Pollutants
• Two new books edited by Tom Zeller

Conference Announcements

• Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazard across a Globalizing World
• CFP: 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS 08)
• CFP: World Congress of Environmental History 2009
• CFP: Ecological restoration and human flourishing in the era of anthropogenic climate change. September 5-7, 2008, Clemson University
• ICOHTEC 2008 Call for Papers

Good Envirotechies: The subject line says it all! Please send me any information you would like to see in the fall edition of The Envirotech Newsletter by this Friday so we can proceed. Actually, we will be transitioning to an all-web format this time as Finn and Dolly take over the job of editing the envirotech news items. They will be sending out a note when the latest news and updates have been posted. We hope this new format will provide a more flexible and accessible means of communicating important Envirotech news. Many thanks to Finn and Dolly for taking over the job, and also to all of you who have contributed to the newsletter over the past three years. I hope to see many of you out here in our neck of the woods next spring for the ASEH conference in beautiful Boise.

Cheers!

Tim

At our breakfast at ASEH this spring, we discussed subsidizing graduate students for our breakfast at SHOT.
We need one or two people who will take this project on – it means setting a figure on how much money we can spend, getting approval from SHOT and getting the subsidy included on conference registration forms.
This is a great way to get involved in Envirotech!
Contact Ann if you are volunteering at angreene@sas.upenn.edu.

Joy and Betsy put this archive of old Envirotech emails on the web so that we can retain the ideas that were generated in our October, 2004, discussion about the scope and content of “an Envirotech book of essays.”

Mail archive