This post introduces Subhankar Banerjee and Finis Dunaway’s recently published Environmental History article, “Beyond Fortress Conservation: Postcards of Biodiversity and Justice.” Read the Full Article Imagine this. You’ve been invited to attend a formal dinner at the White House in Washington, DC. You show up wearing flip flops, beach shorts, and a tank top. Many would consider your outfit to be inappropriate, even blasphemous. Now consider the world of art. Collectively, the Venice Biennale art exhibitions represent one of the largest international gatherings of contemporary art, with a lon ..read more

NiCHE-JHI Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar Virtual Roundtable EH Week 2023 Wednesday, 19 April 2023, 12-2pm EDT, Zoom REGISTER HERE As part of ASEH Environmental History Week 2023, please join us for the Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North virtual roundtable co-hosted by NiCHE and the Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) at the University of Toronto. Now approaching the end of its second year, the Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North JHI Working Group brings together international researchers at all career stages. We are interested in fostering north-south and east-west dialogues by ..read more

This story by Gian Marco Visconti first appeared in Edmonton City as Museum Project – Story Collection, 2023. Unfortunately, Edmonton is filled with stories of lost land and water bodies and, unless we attempt to remember what they were, we may never know what we have failed to preserve. While Alberta is often understood as a prairie province, Edmonton is nestled within a geographical zone known as aspen parkland: an ecoregion that exists as a meeting place between northern boreal forests and southern grassland. The hybrid nature of the Edmonton region contributes to its patchwork of natural f ..read more

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been increased interest in the impacts of disease on states and societies, including in the past. At the same time, the pandemic has given renewed vigor to the digitization of research materials, including archives, making them available to researchers despite limits to travel. In this context, researchers at the Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC), McGill University, have begun to re-examine histories of disease in nineteenth-century India. My contribution to this project, which is part of a wider SSHRC Partnership entitled Appraising Risk ..read more

Call for Proposals: Lesbian Earth  The Journal of Lesbian Studies  Proposals due May 1, 2023. Full manuscripts due October 1, 2023  Issue Editors:  Sabine LeBel, University of New Brunswick, slebel [at] unb.ca  Chandra Laborde, University of California Berkeley, chandra_laborde [at] berkeley.edu  At the intersection of feminism and ecology, ecofeminism has recognized that the liberation of all women from patriarchal oppressive structures will not be fully effected without the liberation of nature. This bond between women and nature is not new, it has bee ..read more

Environmental Histories of Foraging A NiCHE Series Proposal Deadline: April 5th, 2023 Series Publication: Starts May 2023 Through the act of foraging, environments become dynamic, lived spaces rather than static backdrops. How do moments of engagement with the environment while foraging shape the past and future? How are the conditions upon which we are able to engage with environments constructed and how do they affect (or detract from) our relationships to nature? What potentials do histories of foraging have to change current and future perspectives on nature? By approaching the topic of fo ..read more

Rethinking War Conference 2nd Annual Virtual Conference: April 21-22, 2023 Organized by Bridget Keown, PhD : University of Pittsburgh Following a highly successful conference last spring, Rethinking War is back, and eager to continue our study of war across disciplines and types of narrative. This is a conference that welcomes presentations, works-in-progress, and discussions from scholars and students of all levels, including undergraduates, public historians, museum professionals, veterans, and military professionals. The work of recovering, constructing, and sharing narratives in an inheren ..read more

This is the story of the oldest recorded tornado in Canada. On the afternoon of July 1st, 1792, a tornado ripped through the Niagara Region; a peninsula located in southern Ontario and known for its temperate climate as one of the province’s prime fruit growing regions. The region had just become home to hundreds of United Empire Loyalist refugees following the American Revolution. This influx of families throughout the 1780s and 90s signaled the beginning of an organized colonial inhabitation of the region. While this part of Canada is no Tornado Alley, it’s seen more tornado action than one ..read more

The North-West Mounted Police were established by the relatively new Dominion of Canada in May 1873. Initially an attempt to make sense of the massive, varied, and challenging geography of the Dominion, which had expanded dramatically after the purchase of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company a few years prior, the North-West Mounted Police have environmental themes baked into their roots. Its was amalgamated with the Dominion Police, the Dominion’s federal law enforcement agency, in 1920 to form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Not only have the Mounties, as they came to be called ar ..read more

Every month I carefully track the most popular and significant environmental history articles, videos, audio, and other items making their way through the online environmental history (#envhist) community. You can read all of our past #EnvHist Worth Reading lists right here. Here are my choices for items most worth reading from February 2023: 1. How the seeds of environmental racism were planted in the Progressive Era This Grist article is adapted from Nick Tabor’s new book, Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created. Africatown is a community o ..read more