ASEH Recent News
ASEH 2024 Annual Conference
The Westin Denver Downtown
April 3-7, 2024
The CALL FOR PROPOSALS for ASEH 2024 is now open!
ASEH 2024 will feature research on all facets of environmental history, from any geographical or temporal context, especially related to the conference theme, Changing Climates: Environmental Histories of Extractivism and Speculation. The Program Committee welcomes traditional panels, individual papers, teaching and pedagogy sessions, innovative formats, and sessions that encourage active audience participation. Click here to view the entire Call for Proposals and to submit panels, roundtables, alternative sessions, posters, and individual papers.
The deadline for submissions is July 15, 2023.
Looking for Co-panelists or Interested in Chairing a Session?
Check the ASEH 2024 Message Board.
ASEH announced the winners of all if its distinguished awards, prizes for scholarships, and research fellowships at last week’s annual conference in Boston. This year’s winners are:
AWARDS
Distinguished Scholar Award
Joel Tarr
Lisa Mighetto Distinguished Service Award
Paul S. Sutter
Distinguished Career in Public Environmental History
Jenny Price
PRIZES
George Perkins Marsh Prize for best book in environmental history
Winner:
Ruth Rogaski, Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland (University of Chicago Press)
Finalists:
Abigail Agresta, The Keys to Bread and Wine: Faith, Nature, and Infrastructure in Late Medieval Valencia (Cornell)
Andy Bruno, Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and Its Environmental Legacy (Cambridge)
Laura Martin, Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration (Harvard)
Rachel Carson Prize for best dissertation
Scott Doebler (Penn State University), "Arboreal Apogees: Maya, English, And Spanish Ecologies In Lowland Yucatán And Guatemala, 1517-1717
Alice Hamilton Prize for best article outside of the journal Environmental History
Simone Schleper, "Caribou crossings: the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, conservation, and stakeholdership in the Anthropocene"
Leopold-Hidy Award to honor the best article in the journal Environmental History
Emily Brownell, “Reterritorializing the Future: Writing Environmental Histories of the Oil Crisis from Tanzania.”
ASEH-FHS Graduate Student Essay Prize:
Ethan Barkalow (Georgetown University), “Empire Underwater: Seaweed and Technology on a Korean Littoral, 1907-1945"
Environmental History Fellows:
Camden Elliott (Harvard University), “Nursery of Empire: Trees, Time, and Native American Resistance in the Colonial Northeast, 1675-1765”
Chandra Laborde (University of California Berkeley), “Building a Country Women's Commune: Spatializing Ecological Feminism in Northern California during the 1970s”
Hayden Nelson (University of Kansas), “‘Saw-Mills and Liberty!’: Timber Resources, Property, and Removal in Territorial Kansas”
Most Effective Poster at ASEH 2023 Annual Conference:
Caleb Ireland, Bates College, “Let Freedom Ring from the Mighty Cypress Trees to the Amber Waterways: An Environmental History of Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp”
Dmitrijs Porsnovs, University of Stavanger, “How listening to science become a disaster: History of tire artificial reefs off the Atlantic coast”
FELLOWSHIPS
Hal Rothman Dissertation Fellowship
Anjuli Webster (Emory University), “Fluid empires: histories of environment and sovereignty in nineteenth century southern Africa”
J. Donald Hughes Graduate Research Fellowships
Andrew Craig (University of Georgia), “Obnoxious Odors, Dead Vegetation, and Irritated Lungs: Nuisance Lawsuits and Community Mobilization against Fertilizer Production in the US South 1910-1920”
Weijia (Vicky) Shen (University of Pittsburgh), “Plants, Insects, and the Making of the 20th century Asia-Pacific”
Equity Graduate Fellowship
Donal Thomas (Stony Brook University), “Knowledge Transfer from the Natural World of the Western Ghats: Indigenous Voices and the making of Imperial Metropolitan Institutions, 1770-1905”
Samuel P. Hays Research Fellowship
Diana Alejandra Méndez Rojas (Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero y Socialista, Mexico City), “Mario Payeras And The Ecological Critique Of Civilization”
In the election held in February 2023, the membership elected the following candidates:
Vice President/President Elect: Jay Turner
ASEH Council:
Faisal Husain
Melanie Kiechle
Ramya Swayamprakash
Christopher Wells
ASEH Nominating Committee:
Jennifer Bonnell
Michelle Mart
ASEH thanks for their service outgoing Members of the Council:
Ellen Arnold
Mike Dockry
Catherine McNeur
Marsha Weisiger
Graeme Wynn (Past President)
And outgoing members of the Nominating Committee:
Michael Egan
Ling Zhang
New members will take their positions at the conclusion of the ASEH Council Meeting on April 8.
ASEH joined many other ACLS member societies to sign the ACLS-authored Statement In Support of Academic Freedom and New College of Florida. The full text is below.
View the full text of the statement is below and all signatories.
In recent years, we have seen politicians intensify their effort to re-brand institutions of higher education – specifically, the humanities and social sciences – as hothouses of liberal indoctrination. Their attacks threaten public understanding of our nation’s history and culture, and they undermine key principles of academic freedom and faculty governance.
The governor of Florida has now moved past rhetoric to direct action with its current “overhaul” of New College of Florida. The state administration uses the word “indoctrination” often and freely. By ousting Dr. Patricia Okker, the president of New College of Florida, and by taking over the college’s Board of Trustees, they reveal themselves as would-be indoctrinators of views that undermine the purpose of higher education in a democracy. Other states are already pursuing similar efforts of intimidation and censorship.
ACLS stands up in support of ex-President Okker, the New College community, and faculty and students at institutions of higher education around the country who are experiencing similar political interventions. We believe that higher education is based on critical thinking and informed debate. We recognize that differences of opinion are vital to academic inquiry, and we support the rights of all students and faculty to freely engage in scholarly conversation and civil debate. This is precisely what is threatened in this moment.
We ask every member of the ACLS community to inform themselves about these dangerous developments and to draw on the resources of ACLS, its member societies, and other groups that are mobilizing to protect faculty governance and advocate for the free circulation of humanistic knowledge.
We thank those of you already joining the fight in your societies and on your campuses. ACLS invites our community of member societies, member institutions, fellows and grantees, and supporters to sign this statement to affirm their support for sustaining academic freedom in higher education.
ASEH holds elections every other year according to the rules set out in our bylaws, which also detail the responsibilities and terms of each office.
The Nominating Committee assembled a slate of candidates for the positions of Vice President/President-Elect, Council members (4), and Nominating Committee (2). Only active ASEH members are eligible to vote.
The candidates submitted STATEMENTS. Please read them to learn more about each person on the slate.
Join ASEH or Renew Your Membership
Members can log in and vote between 4 February and 4 March.
Apply for ASEH Prizes, Awards, and Fellowships
ASEH is now accepting applications for research fellowships, and submissions and nominations for prizes and awards. Click on the links below for more information and instructions about how to apply and submit nominations.
All deadlines are November 20, 2022.
Each year, ASEH awards five prizes for outstanding scholarship in the field of environmental history. Please read the instructions for submitting your work for consideration for each prize listed below.
Alice Hamilton Prize for best article outside journal Environmental History
Leopold-Hidy Prize for best article in journal Environmental History (with Forest History Society)
Rachel Carson Prize for best dissertation in environmental history
ASEH-FHS Graduate Student Essay Prize
The ASEH currently offers four research fellowships: the Hal Rothman Dissertation Fellowship, the J. Donald Hughes Graduate Research Fellowship, the Equity Graduate Student Fellowship, and the Samuel P. Hays Fellowship.
The Rothman, Hughes, and Equity Fellowships are reserved for graduate students; the Hays Fellowship is open to all non-student practicing historians.
In addition, the ASEH co-sponsors the ASEH–Newberry Library Fellowship for scholars who will work with the Newberry's extensive holdings in Chicago.
ASEH will also award its annual Distinguished Scholar Award and Lisa Mighetto Distinguished Service Award, along with the Distinguished Career in Public Environmental History Award.
You can nominate candidates for these awards here.
ASEH's Nominating Committee Seeks Candidates for Leadership
Do you want to help chart ASEH’s course in the coming years? Do you have ideas about how to keep ASEH a vibrant community? Do you have a perspective that you think needs to be heard? Have you admired a fellow ASEH member’s commitment to our common principles, or their efforts to advocate on behalf of others? Perhaps you’ve been astounded by how effortlessly a colleague organized a workshop or conference panel. Or possibly you’ve long admired how a fellow ASEH member instills a rich appreciation for environmental history among public audiences. If the answer to any of these questions is yes—the nominating committee of ASEH would appreciate your help in filling the following imminent vacancies in the society’s governance structure:
One candidate for Vice President/President elect
As Vice President, this person will have overall charge of arrangements for the society's annual program, for which purpose he/she shall also appoint a program committee. He/she shall also arrange joint programs with other organizations in cooperation with the President and members of the Council. He/she shall act for the President in all other matters when the President is absent or unable to act. As President, he/she will preside at all business meetings of the society and shall appoint members of all committees except where otherwise provided for in the bylaws.
Four Council Members (8 candidates needed)
Elected members of the Council shall participate equally and jointly with elected officers in making collective decisions concerning the society where provided for in the bylaws or where otherwise necessary and proper.
Two Nominating Committee Members (4 candidates needed)
These members are charged with identifying candidates to stand for elections, which take place in the January of odd years.
To make a nomination, you can use the online Nomination Form or feel free to contact any of the four current nominating committee members via e-mail: Michael Egan (megan@mcmaster.ca), Dan Macfarlane (daniel.macfarlane@wmich.edu), Emily Pawley (pawleye@dickinson.edu), or Ling Zhang (ling.zhang.2@bc.edu).
Nominations will be gratefully received until October 7, 2022.
The election will take place in January 2023.
ASEH Sends Letter Urging the EPA Not to Retire its Online Archive
ASEH joined the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) and Environmental Historians Action Collaborative to urge the EPA to keep its online web archive open to provide ready access to public agency documents. The EPA Web Archive has been a valuable resource for historians and the general public. Text of the letter is below. EDGI sent a letter simultaneously with many co-signers, and an accompanying press release, protesting the decision to sunset the EPA online archive.
Download the letter as a pdf as transmitted on June 13.
The Honorable Michael Regan
Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20460
Re: Retiring the EPA Online Archive
Dear Administrator Regan,
We the undersigned write to express our opposition to EPA’s plan announced in February to sunset its online archive in July 2022. The vast majority of our government’s interaction with the public comes through digital channels; public digital archives such as the EPA’s are of enormous value to historians as well as to the public.
This EPA archive has already proven immensely useful to environmental historians.[1] Not only are citations to it regularly featured in traditional scholarly venues, it has greatly facilitated projects such as “A People’s EPA”, a website and Twitter feed through which historians help explain the work of the EPA to a broader public.
Not just historians but those from a variety of academic disciplines as well as the public rely on the EPA digital archive for information, insight, and analysis. The site has provided resources for others working in ecology, biology, toxicology, and other environmental sciences as well as geography, law, sociology, political science, and public health. Professors and teachers at various levels, from K-12 schools to the graduate level utilize the archive as a pedagogical resource, directing students to pages that offer authoritative records of the geographies they are exploring. Not least among those who have relied on the EPA’s online archive are those working with and living in more marginalized or environmental justice communities, a stated priority of current EPA leadership.
Having easily accessible documentation of the extensive EPA’s investigations and records of decision for Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for instance, has helped overcome local doubts about the agency’s effectiveness, yielded greater understanding of chemical exposures, and otherwise significantly supported the agency’s efforts at clean-up. Here and elsewhere, residents faced with a potential environmental hazard can more easily access the agency’s past work in their locale as an aid to understanding prior investigations at the site.
The importance of EPA’s online archive is perhaps best illuminated by considering what will be lost when this archive is taken down. The many mentioned uses of EPA documents will become much more difficult for those who cannot travel to EPA’s print collections, and with any pandemic recurrence, well-nigh impossible. A tremendous gap will also open up in what more recent historical records are accessible, as it takes many years for any preserved documents to be transferred to and made available through the National Archives. It will become much more difficult for historians to assess and interpret this agency’s recent past, much less to situate it within longer histories and larger contexts.
We understand that the EPA’s provision of a public archive of its own documents and deliberations is voluntary and that online maintenance entails some costs. But those need to be factored against the better and broader understanding it has nourished of the vital work done by this federal agency, whose own future hinges on greater public awareness of and support for what it does. Instead of doing away with the EPA archive, the Biden administration should promote it as a model for other parts of the Executive Branch. In our digital age, agencies should make their own publications and other public interactions more quickly, thoroughly, and durably accessible, both to historians and to the larger publics our government serves.
Sincerely,
Sarah S. Elkind
President
American Society for Environmental History
The following organizations have cosigned this statement:
American Association of Geographers
American Historical Association
College Art Association of America
Environmental Historians Action Collaborative
National Council on Public History
Society of Architectural Historians
World History Association
[1] Works that cite <archive.epa.gov> include: Bahng, Aimee. "The Pacific Proving Grounds and the Proliferation of Settler Environmentalism." Journal of Transnational American Studies 11, no. 2 (2020); Cronin, John. "The Cuyahoga fire at fifty: a false history obscures the real water crisis that never ceased." Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 9, no. 3 (2019): 340-351; Elmore, Bartow J. "Roundup from the ground up: A supply-side story of the world's most widely used herbicide." Agricultural History 93, no. 1 (2019): 102-138; Fredrickson, Leif, Christopher Sellers, Lindsey Dillon, Jennifer Liss Ohayon, Nicholas Shapiro, Marianne Sullivan, Stephen Bocking et al. "History of US presidential assaults on modern environmental health protection." American journal of public health 108, no. S2 (2018): S95-S103; Gillam, Carey. "An Award-Winning Discovery." In Whitewash, pp. 23-41. Island Press, Washington, DC, 2017; Gutkowski, Andrew. "The Evolution of Environmental (In) Justice in Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1900–2000." Journal of American History 106, no. 4 (2020): 923-948; Hepler-Smith, Evan. "Molecular bureaucracy: Toxicological information and environmental protection." Environmental History 24, no. 3 (2019): 534-560; Rankin, William. "The Accuracy Trap: The Values and Meaning of Algorithmic Mapping, from Mineral Extraction to Climate Change." Environment and History (2022); and Spears, Ellen Griffith. Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town. University of North Carolina Press, 2014, and Rethinking the American Environmental Movement Post-1945. Routledge, 2019.
At the awards ceremony Saturday night March 26th in Eugene, OR, ASEH announced the winners of its annual awards, prizes, and fellowships. Congratulations to this year's winners:
The Distinguished Scholar Award given every year to an individual who has contributed significantly to environmental history scholarship.
Linda Nash
The Lisa Mighetto Distinguished Service Award is given every year to an individual who has contributed significantly to the development of ASEH as an organization.
The Public Outreach Project Award presented every two years to an environmental history project that engages the public.
Environmental History Now
Lucas Bessire, Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains (Princeton)
Faisal H. Husain, Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford)
Kristin A. Wintersteen, The Fishmeal Revolution: The Industrialization of the Humboldt Current (California)
Tamara Fernando, “Seeing Like the Sea: A Multispecies History of the Ceylon Pearl Fishery, 1800-1925” (Past and Present, Vol. 254 (1), Sept 2021).
Leopold-Hidy Award to honor the best article in the journal, Environmental History.
Kendra Smith-Howard, “Absorbing Waste, Displacing Labor: Family, Environment, and the Disposable Diaper in the 1970s” (April 2021).
Sherri Sheu, "'A Total Approach to Urban Problems': Summer in the Parks and the National Park Service"
The EH editors selected two Environmental History Fellows who will also participate in the Graduate Essay Prize workshops. These fellows are:
Julia Fine, "'Who Will Voluntarily Sacrifice His Life by Becoming a Labourer?': Water, Work, and Resistance in Colonial Bengal's Salt Industry, 1780-1862"
Kyuhyun Han, "Protect the Forest, Prevent Forest Fires: CCP Forest Fire Prevention and Wasteland-burning Cultivation, 1949-1959"
Marissa Crannell-Ash, for “Unruly Swine: Pigs, Community, and Justice in Late Medieval Burgundy"
Natascha De Vasconcellos Otoya, for “Geological Historical Bicycle Expedition in the Reconcavo Bay, Bahia – Brazil”
Thanglienmang Haokip, for “Swidden Transformations in Manipur: Causes and Consequences on the Environment”
José Manuel Santillana Blanco, for “Racial Motherhood Ecologies: Towards a Mapping of Social Life, Violence & Resistance in the Southwest Borderlands, 1980-Present”
Claire Perrott, for “Volcano in a Cornfield: The History of Parícutin Volcano, 1943-1952”
It's that time of year. ASEH is accepting applications for research fellowships, and submissions and nominations for prizes and awards.
All deadlines are November 20, 2021, so apply now!
Each year, the ASEH awards five prizes for outstanding scholarship in the field of environmental history. The instructions for submitting your work for consideration for each prize are listed below.
The Rothman, Hughes, and Equity Fellowships are reserved for graduate students; the Hays Fellowship is open to practicing historians of any rank.
ASEH will also award its annual Distinguished Scholar Award and Lisa Mighetto Distinguished Service Award, along with the Public Outreach Project Award.
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