Climate in Context: Historical Precedents and the Unprecedented

April 22-23, 2021

University of Texas at Austin and virtual via Zoom https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/historicalstudies/climate/info.php

This conference brings together diverse scholars whose work grapples with the challenges that climate change presents to the discipline of history. Participants will address precedents for this “unprecedented” crisis by uncovering and analyzing the historical roots and analogues of contemporary climate change across a wide range of eras and areas around the world. Can history offer an alternative to visions of the future that appear to be determined by prevailing climate models, and help provide us with new ways of understanding human agency?

Presented by the Institute for Historical Studies.

Generously co-sponsored by the Department of History, Planet Texas 2050, Center for European Studies, Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, Department of Geography and the Environment, Environmental Humanities @ UT courtesy of the English Department, Humanities Institute, History & Philosophy of Science Speaker Series, Center for American Architecture and Design in the School of Architecture, and Jackson School of Geosciences.

Free and open to the public. Streaming online.