2012 Northeast Environmental History Conference

“TWO KINGDOMS: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON FLORA AND FAUNA IN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY”

Saturday, April 14, 2012

New Haven, Connecticut

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE * ABSTRACTS * PARTICIPANTS * TRAVEL INFORMATION

CONFERENCE OVERVIEW:

Yale University’s working group on global environmental history announces a one-day conference entitled “TWO KINGDOMS: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON FLORA AND FAUNA IN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY.”

Human societies have always been defined by its relationship to plants and animals, whether through the domestication efforts that underlay the earliest sedentary societies, the commodification of plants and animals that arrived in the industrial age, or the new opportunities for manipulation that genetic engineering has provided.

This conference will use the topic of plants and animals to explore current scholarship in environmental history. Paper topics might address: the intersection of people, plants and animals; plant and animal agency; state and private conservation efforts; shifting habitats in the modern age; environmental determinism and its discontents; human alterations of plants and animals from their “natural” state; changing aesthetics or philosophical views regarding plants and animals.

In choosing a broad theme for the conference, we have encouraged submission of abstracts that address the broad scope of environmental history, whether dealing with political economy, society and culture, intellectual debates, science and technology, or policy and planning. Conference organizers are particularly interested in the inclusion of comparative and non-U.S. perspectives on environmental history.

Three moderated panel sessions will explore the theme of plants and animals. Presentations will be approximately 15 minutes, based on papers circulated in advance to panel commentators and attendees. A faculty panel, including HARRIET RITVO (MIT), NANCY JACOBS (BROWN), and AARON SACHS (CORNELL) will conclude the day.

Accepted presenters will be notified by December 20, 2011 and asked to submit a full version of their paper for circulation to conference attendees and commentators by March 5, 2012.

Please contact environmentalhistory@yale.edu with any questions.