New Perspectives in Environmental History, Spring 2020 Conference

"New Perspectives in Environmental History"

A Northeast Regional Conference

Yale University, Saturday, April 18, 2020

Burke Auditorium, Kroon Hall

New Haven, Connecticut

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

OVERVIEW: Yale Environmental History will host its eighth “New Perspectives in Environmental History” conference on April 18, 2020 to showcase new projects in the field. The conference will include three moderated panel sessions featuring papers by doctoral students from eight different universities from across the Northeast.

The first panel, “PRODUCING AND EXTRACTING EXPERTISE,” will examine how Scottish courts defined coal in the 1850s; the influence of Indigenous American plant knowledge on European medicine; and the Japanese colonial politics of red brick architecture in early twentieth-century Manchuria.

The second panel, “LANDSCAPES OF VIOLENCE, SPACES OF RESISTANCE,” will analyze “scoutcraft” and bush expertise in Zimbabwe’s liberation war; protests against expanding cattle feedlots in 1970s Lubbock, Texas; and the relationship between Bracero migrant identities and the contemporary town landscape of Temacapulín, Mexico.

The third panel, “VALUING AND MANAGING RESOURCES,” will explore conflicting claims to the Ewaso Ng’iro River in late-colonial Kenya; mudflats and imperial power in Choson-Qing borderlands; the infrastructures of Ottoman sheep-breeding; and the “politics of wonder” in Qing court collections of exotic animals.

Presentations will be based on papers circulated in advance to panel commentators and conference attendees. A faculty panel with CHRISTINE DELUCIA (Williams College), FABIAN DRIXLER (Yale University), DANIEL RODRIGUEZ (Brown University) and will conclude the day’s activities with a discussion of innovative approaches to environmental history.

The conference format is based on successful northeast regional conferences held at Yale in recent years. For more information on past conferences, visit our conference website.