During the 2006 – 2007 academic year, Sara Pritchard revised her book manuscript, organized Montana State University’s Department of History’s third NSF “Mile High, Mile Deep” conference (a joint workshop with the University of Wisconsin – Madison), gave several papers, and advised her first four Master’s students, all of whom are continuing on with their Ph.D.s in environmental history, the history of technology, and/or the history of science. Other changes are on the horizon. After 3.5 good years at Montana State, Sara will be joining the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University (effective July 1, 2007).
Category: News
Betsy Mendelsohn accepts new position
My news is that I’ve got a new job in STS that continues to let me adjunct in the History Dept. here at U. Maryland. I’ll be teaching a small urban environmental history lecture course and an agricultural history seminar next year.
Beginning June 1:
Director
Science, Technology and Society Programs
University of Maryland,
Chestertown Hall, Rm. 1108,
College Park, MD 20742
Last call for Fall Envirotech Newsletter
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
The Horse in the City
The new book The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century by Clay McShane and Joel Tarr is now available from Johns Hopkins University Press. Read about it here.
The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century
Two new books edited by Tom Zeller
Thomas Zeller has co-edited with Christof Mauch two new books of interest for envirotechies:
- The World beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe (Ohio University Press, 2007). Click here for more details about the book from the publisher.
- Rivers of History: Designing and Conceiving Waterways in Europe and North America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming 2008). Click here for more details about the book from the publisher.
Tom has previously edited two volumes on German environmental history:
How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Ecology & History)
Germany’s Nature: Cultural Landscapes And Environmental History
In addition, Tom published his dissertation in a revised English translation in early 2007:
Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930-1970 (Studies in German History)
ICOHTEC 2008 Call for Papers
The International Committee for the History of Technology has now published its call for papers for the 2008 meeting in Victoria, British Colombia. The call for papers is included below. Because the meeting is in North America, this is a good opportunity for envirotechnies who do not normally attend ICOHTEC in Europe to participate.
Crossing Borders in the History of Technology
35th Symposium in
5-10 August 2008
Deadline for Early Decision for Proposals is
Final Deadline for Proposals is
While open to all proposals dealing with the history of technology, the program committee suggests the following sub-themes for the consideration of session organizers and contributors:
• The exchange of ideas and transfer of technology in history
• The spread of technological theories over national borders
• The impact of international trade on technological development
• Globalization of technology
• Osmosis between science and technology
• Interaction between culture and technology
• Technologies of social mobility and gender
• Migration and social mobility in the history of technology
• Loyalty to traditions and the frenzy of novelties
• Technology and the zeitgeist
• Unrealized, utopian and science fiction technology
• Crossing the border between nature and technology
We urge contributors to consider organizing a full session of three or more papers. Individual paper submissions will, of course, be considered. It is also possible to propose papers unrelated to the general theme. They can be presented in a “Special Topics” sessions.
Note: Membership in ICOHTEC is not required to participate in the symposium.
INDIVIDUAL PAPER proposals must include: (1) a 250-word (maximum) abstract in English; and (2) a one-page CV. Abstracts should include the author’s name and email address, a short descriptive title, a concise statement of the thesis, a brief discussion of the sources, and a summary of the major conclusions. Please indicate if you intend your paper for one of the specified subthemes. In preparing your paper, remember that presentations are not full-length articles. You will have no more than 20 minutes to speak, which is roughly equivalent to 8 double-spaced typed pages. Contributors are encouraged to submit full-length versions of their papers after the conference for consideration by ICOHTEC’s journal ICON. If you are submitting a paper proposal dealing with a particular subtheme, please indicate this in your proposal. For more suggestions about preparing your symposium presentation, please consult the guidelines at the symposium web site: http://icohtec.uvic.ca/
SESSION proposals must include: (1) an abstract of the session (250 words maximum), listing the proposed papers and a session chairperson; (2) abstracts for each paper (250 words maximum); (3) a one-page CV for each contributor and chairperson. Sessions should consist of at least three speakers, and may include several sections of three speakers each, which might extend over more than one day.
Proposal submissions
The final deadline for all submissions is
If web access is unavailable, proposals may be sent by fax to ICOHTEC 2008 at: (1] 250-721-8772. Otherwise they may be sent via regular mail or courier, postmarked not later than
ICOHTEC2008
Department of History
Victoria, B.C. V8W 3P4
Courier packages should be addressed:
Department of History
Clearihue Building Room B245
Victoria, B.C V8W 3P4
All questions about the programme proposals should be submitted to the chair of the programme committee,
Envirotech Meeting at ESEH a Big Success
We convened a special lunchtime meeting of Envirotech at the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) conference in Amsterdam, June 5-9, 2007. The meeting was a big success! With 23 attendees, we pulled in almost 10 percent of the registered participants of the meeting, which demonstrates the huge interest in envirotech issues worldwide. The participants came from many countries, including Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, UK, and US. For many of the attendees, it was their first time at an Envirotech meeting, so it was an excellent opportunity for older Envirotech members to make connections with European scholars and for the European researchers to meet each other.
The meeting was chaired by Dolly Jørgensen. We had reports on the current status of the book project (Ed Russell), the 2007 article prize (Frank Uekötter), SHOT sessions and new website (Finn Arne Jørgensen). Richard Wilk (Anthropology Department, Indiana University) announced that he is looking for manuscripts for publication as the editor of a book series “Globalization and the Environment” with Altamira Press (see http://www.altamirapress.com/series/).
The ESEH 2007 conference had the theme “Environmental Connections.” Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, opened the conference with a paper titled “Environmental history: Revitalising connection, context and coherence in historical studies.” She argued that connections lie at the core of environmental history, giving it both its direction and its strength. Using the example of Dutch colonization of South Africa, she explored some of the ways environmental expectations led to challenges for both the Europeans and Africans in the early modern period. Carruthers emphasized that environmental history has the opportunity to tell histories across national and cultural boundaries. As a discipline, it has the opportunity to connect new sources – oral, visual, spatial, scientific – and connect new ideas and concepts – similarities, patterns, interactions, continuities, evolution, and differences.
A number of papers at the conference picked up on the theme by focusing on scientific, environmental and knowledge exchanges during colonization efforts, such as the transfer of irrigation technology, importation of botanical specimens and development of national park ideas. Other papers focused on later exchanges, such as the influence of European livestock science on Brazilian cattle ranching in the 19th and 20th centuries and connections between German and American wastewater treatment design.
The “connections” theme is particularly fitting for envirotech researchers as we work to show the connections between technology and the environment. Much of what Carruthers said about environmental history applies to the history of technology as well. The intersection of history of environment and technology has the opportunity to tell histories that cut across traditional boundaries of nation states, periodization, and historical disciplines.
ESEH normally meets every other year and we plan to continue meeting as a group there. But in lieu of a separate meeting in 2009, ESEH will meet collectively with a number of other environmental history organizations at the World Environmental History Congress August 4-9, 2009 in Copenhagen. Envirotech plans to meet at the 2009 Congress.
By Dolly Jørgensen
Originally published in the Envirotech Newsletter 2007/1
Volunteers needed for graduate student breakfast initiative
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.
ASEH 2008
The ASEH 2008 conference will be in Boise, Idaho, March 12- 16. Envirotech will hold a special interest group meeting during the conference (date and time tbd).
The deadline for paper and panel proposals for the conference has passed. Conference registration will begin in late fall 2007. See http://www.aseh.net/conferences/current-conference for details.
SHOT 2007 Conference
SHOT’s 2007 conference will be held in Washington, D.C., October 17-21. Find out more information on the conference website.