WANTED: Graduate Candidate interested in Environmental Communication

Seeking a student interested in pursuing the MS in Technical Communication in the research area of Environmental Communication.

The research is centered on the role of citizen participation in shaping Superfund remedies at various sites in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin of Montana (“America’s Largest Superfund Site”). Tasks may include oral interviews of participants; reading and summarizing relevant literature; rhetorical analysis of risk communication; and reading, classification, and coding of archival documents and interview transcripts.

The Department of Professional & Technical Communication offers the MS degree in Technical Communication. For more information on admissions requirements, the curriculum, and the faculty, please see the department website at http://www.mtech.edu/hss/ptc/grad_program.html .

If interested, please email me directly with a letter of interest and a resume to pmunday@mtech.edu.

Thank you,

Professor Pat Munday, PhD
Technical Communication Department
Montana Tech
Butte  MT  59701

Press Release from Montana Tech

Soon after settling in Butte in 1990, Montana Tech professor and environmental historian Pat Munday became interested and involved in Superfund issues. For many years, he worked with groups such as the Clark Fork River Technical Assistance Committee and Trout Unlimited to promote remedies protective of human and environmental health. Now that the remedies, or Records of Decision, have been completed on most sites in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin, it’s time to step back and examine Superfund as a social and political process.

“As America’s largest Superfund site, this is a story the nation needs to know,” Munday explains. The National Science Foundation agrees, and has awarded Munday a two-year grant to study the role of citizens in shaping Superfund remedy at several sites in the upper Clark Fork. The grant is a Science & Society Scholar Award, and will also support a graduate research assistant in the Technical Communication master’s program.

“Once remedies are implemented, the total cost of Superfund in this area will far exceed one billion dollars,” Munday said. “The sheer amount of money is just one indicator of how hard citizens, grassroots organizations, and activist scientists worked to try and persuade the Environmental Protection Agency and ARCO-British Petroleum to do the right thing.” In his study, Munday will compare the relative effectiveness of citizens in shaping remedy at major sites such as Milltown Dam, Anaconda Community Soils, and Butte Priority Soils. His thesis is that public participation works, with the extent of public participation more or less correlating with the quality of clean-up.

Literary Sources relevant to Envirotechies

Joy Parr put out a call for tips about relevant literary sources for envirotechies earlier this year. These are a few of the submissions. Hopefully we can expand on this list later.

Pat Munday suggested the following titles:

Abbey, Ed. 1975. The Monkey Wrench Gang. Required reading.

Brautigan, Richard. 1974. Trout Fishing in America. The chapter titled “The Cleveland Wrecking Yard” is especially insightful regarding the buying, selling, and artificial construction of the “natural” world.

Callenbach, Ernest. 1975. Ecotopia. I don’t know if it still resonates with students—it sure did in the late 1970s.

Dineson, Isak (aka Karen Blixen). 1938. Out of Africa. Western technology & imperialism meet indigenous Kenyan cultures.

Faulkner, William. 1942. The Bear. Touching story of a young man coming of age in a world where technology/development are displacing nature.

LeGuin, Ursula. Lots of her stuff is strong on the enviro/tech theme—my favorite for class use is the 1976 novel, The Word for World is Forest. Human imperialism expands to the planet of Athshe, where the “Creechies” enter a dream-time to defeat the invaders.

McCarthy, Cormac. 2006. The Road. I’ve not actually used this in a class, yet, but it offers deep insights into what we appreciate (and take for granted!) about technology and the natural world.

Piercy, Marge. 1991. He, She, and It. Nice feminist spin on the Golem story.

Generally, anything by Robinson Jeffers, Gary Snyder, or Wallace Stegner is good.

Finn Arne Jørgensen suggested these (mostly scifi) books that deal with environment and technology in various ways:

Kim Stanley Robinson: Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars (trilogy on the colonization and terraforming of Mars)

Kim Stanley Robinson: 40 Signs of Rain

Kim Stanley Robinson: 50 Degrees Below

Kim Stanley Robinson: 60 Days and Counting

Bruce Sterling: Heavy Weather

CFP: World Congress of Environmental History 2009

Announcing the WCEH 2009 First World Congress of Environmental History 2009 “Local Livelihoods And Global Challenges: Understanding Human Interaction With The Environment” in Copenhagen, Denmark, August 4-8, 2009.

The conference is hosted by The International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations (ICEHO) and Roskilde University.

We invite panel, paper, and poster proposals for the 1st World Congress of Environmental History. The Congress aims to bring together scholars from all over the globe, providing a unique opportunity to learn from each other and to create overarching perspectives on the historical relationships between people and the environment through time.

The development of environmental history has been closely linked to local and regional histories and situations. While this is a strength of the field, it is also a potential weakness. We need to question whether big pictures can be constructed on the basis of more numerous case studies. Do we gain new insights by comparing case studies and drawing conclusions from doing so? Are we able to learn from each other with regard to sources and methods? Can environmental history become politically relevant if we put together empirically sound meta-narratives that go beyond specific times and places?

ICEHO member organizations believe that the answer to all these questions is YES! We therefore seek to devote this World Congress to sharing environmental histories worldwide. In order to broaden our comparative understanding, we seek to highlight places in which no environmental histories have been conducted, or have not yet reached an international audience. For the first time young scholars and senior academics, environmental historians from all over the world, and with different disciplinary backgrounds will meet in order to further the development of environmental history world-wide.

Submissions
Proposals may address any area of environmental history but, in keeping with the goals of the Congress, the Program Committee specifically solicits submissions of new and original work that will foster the sharing of environmental history and advance productive comparisons.

Oral presentations will be 15-20 minutes long. The conference language is English. Papers must be original: they should not previously have been presented at a professional conference nor published in a scholarly journal. Individual papers are welcome, but are more difficult to accommodate than submissions of entire panels. Panel proposals must be limited either to three papers (commentator optional), or four papers without a commentator. Participants may only submit one formal paper, but they may also be chairs or commentators. Presenters may chair sessions, but not those they present in.

Successful panel submissions will have (1) a good empirical foundation and describe one or more case studies that would together enhance a comparative perspective within a session or (2) be of wider relevance for the discipline in terms of development of methods, new sources and approaches. Papers comparing the same theme in various regions as well as those that present different facets of the environmental history of one place (if this research is new and original) will be welcomed. The conference covers all periods of human history.

A set of keywords is provided on the submission form. You are asked to choose up to three to help the conference organisers to construct thematic threads.

Postgraduate researchers can submit work in progress (ongoing PhD or Master’s thesis work) for specially designed roundtable sessions (10 minute presentations, with ample time for discussion) that will be chaired by a senior mentor. These roundtables are focused on providing international input on research problems and questions that pertain to developing researchers.

We encourage contributions by scholars from any disciplinary background.

Deadline for submissions is March, 30th, 2008.

To submit a panel, single paper, roundtable contribution or poster
Please visit our website at www.wceh2009.org and go to Submission for details. Abstracts should have between 2000 and 3000 characters (incl. spaces) and should contain up to 5 bibliographic references. A 1-2 page CV must be submitted for each paper and presenter. Use the forms on the website to submit your material.

Posters
The submission process for posters is the same at that for papers. Posters will be on display during the Congress and authors will have an opportunity to introduce their research in 3 minutes oral presentations in plenary sessions highlighted in the program. If you wish to submit a poster, use the “Poster” submission form. If your poster is accepted, you will be asked to provide material for the short oral presentation prior to the Congress.

Review Process
Your panel, paper, or poster will be reviewed by the Program Committee in an anonymous process so as to ensure high scholarly standards. Each paper will be reviewed independently by at least three members of the Program Committee, two of whom will assess the quality of the submission, while the third reviewer will assess its relevance to the development of environmental history and its global or international importance. The Program Committee will assess papers within panels individually, and reserves the right to regroup or reassign them into appropriate sessions.

Online submission is the primary means of sending your abstract. If you do not have access to electronic connections, your paper must be delivered by mail by March 14th, 2008 to the congress secretariat. Notification will be by e-mail. In order to be accepted for the program, you will need to reconfirm your participation and register for the conference.

ICEHO Member organizations:
American Society for Environmental History
IUFRO Research Group 6.07.00 Forest History
Association of South Asia Environmental Historians
International Water History Association
Australian Environmental History Network
Network in Canadian History & Environment
Australian Forest History Society
Otago University, History Department
European Society for Environmental History
Sheffield Hallam University
Forest History Society
German Historical Institute
Sociedad Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Historia Ambiental

Contact
Should you have any questions, please contact the conference secretariat at: wceh2009@ruc.dk The conference secretariat is located at Roskilde University (RUC). The address is: Roskilde University, Universitetsvej 1, Building 04.2., Att.: Lisa Rimstad Jacobsen, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark.

Manufactured Landscapes available for institutional sale and rental

Manufactured Landscapes is currently available for institutional sale and rental through the film’s US distributor, Zeitgeist Films. The film can either be purchased (i.e., by a university library) or rented directly from the distributor. Details and order forms can be found at: http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/nontheatrical.php

Purchase: The DVD, with Public Performance Rights (PPR), sells for $195 plus $6 for shipping with rights to screen to groups of up to 50 when no admission is charged (i.e., libraries, classrooms, clubs, etc.). If your university wants to show the film and charge admission, they need to contact Zeitgeist for open showing fees. Zeitgeist requires institutional purchase orders or pre-order payment by check or credit card.

Rental: The film can be rented from the distributor for classroom or non-profit organization use. Contact Zeitgeist for details and price quotes.

If you have any questions, please contact Ben Simington at Zeitgeist.

Ben Simington
Zeitgeist Films
212-274-1989
ben@zeitgeistfilms.com
http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/contact.php

The film will be available for commercial / home purchase/rental in the US sometime in November, and it has recently opened in theaters in some European countries. (So far I’ve heard of showings in Germany and France.)

Download Manufactured Landscapes Flyer in PDF format.

Solidarity, Sustainability, and Non-Violence (SSNV) Research Newsletter: If not the MDGs, then what?

Is anyone here doing research, or working with, the United Nations’
Millennium Development Goals?

Luis
_______________________________________________________

The Vol. 3, No. 11, November 2007 issue of the

Solidarity, Sustainability, and Non-Violence (SSNV) Research Newsletter http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv03n11.html

has been posted. The focus this month is the question:

“IF NOT THE MDGs, THEN WHAT?”

Table of contents:

RESEARCH REPORT & MONTHLY DIGEST
1. Global News & Emerging Issues
2. Negative Assessments of the MDGs
3. Positive Assessments of the MDGs
4. Balanced Assessment of the MDGs
5. If Not the MDGs, Then What?
6. Current Research on the MDGs
7. Web Resources & Links Database
8. Prayer, Study, and Action
9. Links to Archived Newsletters

INVITED PAPER
Eco-Humanism and Popular System Dynamics as Preconditions for
Sustainable Development, by Leslaw Michnowski.
http://pelicanweb.org/solisustv03n11michnowski.html

Please forward this notice to friends and colleagues who might be interested in the global transition to a new culture.

Sincerely,
Luis

PS — Consider writing an article for the newsletter!

————————————————————–
Luis T. Gutierrez, Ph.D., P.E.
The Pelican Web ~ http://pelicanweb.org/ SSNV Newsletter ~ http://pelicanweb.org/solisust.html
Email: pelican@pelicanweb.org

Where the Green Ants Dream

By Werner Herzog (1985)
From Rotten Tomatoes website: “Director Werner Herzog’s unusual Aboriginal drama begins and ends with ominous footage of dust storms and tornadoes, accompanied by dramatic classical music. In between is the simple yet jarring story of Aborigines staging protest at the site of a prospective mine. The site also happens to be sacred Aboriginal ground, home of indefatigable green ants whose dreams, the Aborigines believe, are essential to the continuation the entire universe. Hackett (Bruce Spence) is the awkward geologist, manning the mining outpost in what he calls “purgatory south” or the south Australian outback, a landscape crisply sketched by Herzog’s stark cinematography of dust heaps and empty vistas. When the fearless Aborigines walk directly into a line of exploding charges, the mining operation comes to a grinding halt, and Hackett barely prevents frustrated workers from killing them. The simplicity of the Aborigines’ aims, (they will not be swayed by money) serves to highlight the ridiculous and greedy machinations of the mining company as well as the Australian “law of the land.” As the absurdist struggle progresses towards a trial, Hackett’s role as a liaison between the mining company and the stoic natives brings him closer and closer to the Aborigines’ simple yet expansive philosophy of a land-centered spirituality.”

The trial scene is outstanding—a great exercise in the semiotics of nature, contrasting the court of British law with TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge).

The Wedding of Palo

By Rasmussen (1935)

I have an old VHS from Video Yesteryear. A quasi-documentary of “Eskimo life in the Angmagssalik district of Greenland.” It is a wonderful depiction of the toolkit of an indigenous people and a life lived according to the cyclic pattern of weather, seasons, salmon, seals, etc.