"New Perspectives in Environmental History" Conference, Saturday, April 14, 2018, New Haven, CT, REGISTRATION OPEN

Adrian Lerner Patron Discussion

“NEW PERSPECTIVES IN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY”

Saturday, April 14, 2018

A Northeast Regional Conference

https://environmentalhistory.yale.edu/programs/conferences/new-perspectives-environmental-history-2018

Kroon Hall, Yale University

New Haven, Connecticut

Please Register Using the Link Below (Free):

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/new-perspectives-in-environmental-history-spring-2018-conference-registration-42775456542

Yale Environmental History is pleased to announce its upcoming environmental history conference, “New Perspectives in Environmental History.” Please join us in New Haven for a lively day of talks and discussion on Saturday, April 14, 2018.

This one-day conference aims to showcase current doctoral student research in environmental history and to encourage dialogue among graduate students and faculty. The conference will include three moderated panel sessions featuring presentations by graduate students from nine different universities.

The first session, “LANDSCAPE AND REPRESENTATION,” will examine the relationship between conservation and memory in twentieth-century Boston; the role played by colonial surveys in efforts to understand the environment of the Nile Delta in British Egypt; and the interactions between enslaved Afro-Brazilians, the water system of nineteenth-century São Paulo, and the creation of patterns of urban inequality.

The second panel, “RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE,” will analyze the local socio-environmental implications of the British Gold Coast rubber campaign during the Second World War; the impact of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in the industrialization of the American Arctic; and the importance of conflicts over the damming of rivers and access to fish for the indigenous peoples of colonial New England.

The third session, “POWER AND EXPERTISE,” will explore the use of American remote sensor technologies to circumvent environmental challenges to counterinsurgency in Vietnam and Laos; attempts by the India Meteorological Department to predict the monsoon for purposes of imperial governance between 1886 and 1930; the implementation of environmental rights in the state constitutions of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania during the 1970s; and the transnational flows of expertise that characterized the construction of the Wushantou Dam in Japanese Taiwan. 

Presentations will be based on papers circulated in advance to panel commentators and conference attendees. A faculty panel with BATHSHEBA DEMUTH (Brown University), JOSEPH MANNING (Yale University), and LAURA MARTIN (Williams College) will conclude the day’s activities with a discussion of innovative approaches to environmental history. 

9:30     Opening Remarks

Paul Sabin, Yale University

9:45-11:00 Panel 1: Landscape and Representation

Chair: Alan Mikhail, Yale University

Jeffrey Egan (UConn): “Conserving Land and Memory at Boston’s Quabbin Reservoir, 1927-1985”

Mohamed Gamal-Eldin (NJIT/Rutgers-Newark): “Surveying the Land: Towards an Environmental History of the Nile Delta under British Colonial Rule”

Emma Young (NYU): “Tebas and the Chafariz da Misericórdia: Water and Urban Life in Nineteenth-Century São Paulo”

Commentator: Laura Ann Twagira, Wesleyan University

11:00   Coffee Break

11:20-12:35     Panel 2: Resources and Infrastructure

Chair: Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, Yale University

Keri Lambert (Yale): “’We Must Have Every Ounce’: The Gold Coast Rubber Campaign during the Second World War”

Philip Wight (Brandeis): ““No Refuge: The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and the Industrialization of the Arctic”

Zachary Bennett (Rutgers): “’We Desire the Benefit of the Fish’: Colonial Dams and the Dispossession of New England’s Native Peoples”

Commentator: Emily O’Gorman, Macquarie University, Sydney

12:35   Buffet Lunch (free for all registered participants)

1:45-3:35 Panel 3: Power and Expertise

Chair: Deborah Coen, Yale University

Anna Feuer (Yale): “Battling the Landscape: Counterinsurgent Innovation and Rebel Adaptation in Vietnam and Laos”

Sarah Carson (Princeton): “Stubborn, Wayward, and Uncertain”: Rationalizing the South Asian Monsoon, 1886-1930

Elizabeth Hameeteman (Boston University): “The Water Rights Revolution: Constitutionalizing Environmental Protection in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts”

John Hayashi (Harvard): “Fluid Borders: Building a Transnational Dam in Japanese Taiwan, 1911-1930”

Commentator: Harriet Ritvo, MIT

3:35  Afternoon Refreshments

4:00-5:15  Faculty panel

Bathsheba Demuth, Brown University

Joseph Manning, Yale University

Laura Martin, Williams College