president's column: san francisco conference highlights

Seven hundred and sixteen registrants from five continents. More than $60,000 raised for conference sponsorships. Two pre-conference workshops filled to capacity. One hundred sessions and 10 field trips, many overflowing with attendees. A graduate student reception and writings workshops.   Another attendance record broken. The largest book exhibit ever. By all accounts, the 2014 ASEH meeting in San Francisco was a resounding success. We owe a special thanks to the program committee and its chair, David Biggs; to the local arrangements committee and co-chairs, Carolyn Merchant, John Perkins, and Laura Watt; and to the conference volunteers, all of whom contributed much of their time and energy in helping make the San Francisco gathering an intellectually rewarding experience, where old friendships were renewed and new ones were made.

Of all the professional meetings I attend, none match the ASEH for its openness, camaraderie, and communal spirit, which together create an intellectually supportive atmosphere for scholars across generations. When you join the ASEH, you are doing much more than subscribing to the journal, Environmental History. You are also joining a community that extends across the globe. It is a community, united in an intellectual commitment to deepen historical understanding of the changing relationships between humans and the natural world, and sharing a passion to bring that understanding to bear on some of the most pressing issues facing people and the planet.

On Saturday afternoon, while many of you were intently listening to presentations or soaking up the sun and sights of San Francisco, the ASEH executive committee was hard at work in a four-hour marathon session that resulted in important decisions to help ensure the long-term financial stability and operations management of ASEH. The ASEH voted unanimously to renew our contract with Oxford University Press for the publication of the journal Environmental History, contingent upon approval by the Forest History Society Board. The new contract, which extends the journal's publication with Oxford through 2021, establishes a minimum guaranteed revenue stream for ASEH and FHS; substantially increases support for the editorial office of Environmental History; and increases individual subscription benefits, including the addition of a downloadable e-reader version of the journal to all ASEH and FHS members. I am also pleased to report that the ASEH Executive Committee approved renewal of a four-year contract for Lisa Mighetto as executive director of ASEH through 2018. The extent and reach of Lisa's work on behalf of ASEH, from the organization of our annual meeting, to the securing of grants and donations, to the maintenance of the ASEH website and coordination of the many ASEH committees, is notable. We are grateful that ASEH will continue to benefit from her impressive organizational talents and leadership in the years to come.

After a long cold winter, the signs of spring in Wisconsin are beginning to appear. But the season is short on the 45th parallel north. Already thoughts are of summer, and of the 2nd World Congress of Environmental History, which will take place in July in the historic city of Guimarães, Portugal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As a member of the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations, ASEH is proud to be a sponsor of the meeting where scholars from across the globe will gather to further ongoing international conversations and the growth of environmental history world-wide. I hope to see many of you there!

-Gregg Mitman, ASEH President

by Kevin Brown, researcher-writer NPS-ASEH Devils Hole pupfish environmental history project (kevin.brown723@gmail.com)

In the summer of 1950, at the request of the National Park Service leadership, Death Valley National Monument's naturalist travelled east through the Funeral Mountains to Ash Meadows, in Nevada. His charge was to evaluate whether Devils Hole - a small opening to a vast water-filled cave system and home to the Devils Hole pupfish - would be a suitable addition to the National Park system. He reported back that though it "contain[s] points of interest to the scientist" Devils Hole lacked "those qualifications and accessories which combined, constitute national significance to meet the National Park Service standard."

In response to this evaluation, a prominent ichthyologist named Carl Hubbs wrote to National Park Service Director Newton Drury vehemently disagreeing with the naturalist's reasoning and called for adding Devils Hole to Death Valley National Monument. He ended his letter with a stinging jab: "Perhaps I have been naïve in assuming that preservation of nature was among the basic reasons for and functions of the National Park Service. I would hate to think of your department as only a National Playground Service."

This exchange was discovered while combing through the archives at Death Valley National Park, as part of the National Park Service and ASEH history of the Devils Hole pupfish recovery effort I am writing (along with senior historian James Pritchard). After six weeks of archival research across the West, what I am realizing I like best about this project - and the above exchange - is how intimately this small pool (and its even smaller fish) has been connected to larger questions that have confronted Americans in the management of public lands and endangered species. In responding to these letters one can't help but ask, "What are the National Parks actually for? Who do they serve?"

I reflected on how answers to these questions have changed over time as I sat last week by the water of Devils Hole, watching some of the fewer than 100 individuals of this pupfish species swim across a shallow water covered shelf. To get down to the hole today, one must pass a hi-tech security system (to prevent "unauthorized access") and be accompanied by a scientist ... wearing a National Park Service uniform.

"Points of interest to the scientist" apparently did meet "the National Park Service standard," as the 40 acres around Devils Hole was added to Death Valley National Monument less than 18 months after the naturalist recommended against it. That development, however, has only raised a trickier - and still unresolved - question for Devils Hole, the pupfish, and the Park Service: How should ecosystems be managed, in Hubbs' words, for the "preservation of nature"?

I'll get back to you on that.

See winter issue 2013 for Part I of this article. Photos courtesy Kevin Brown.

member news

Jim Clifford (University of Saskatchewan), Colin Coates (York University), and Andrew Watson (York University) have launched "Trading Consequences," a database allowing researchers to explore the history of 19th-century commodities and commodity trading. Drawing from over 170,000 documents, "Trading Consequences" pulls geographic and date information related to nearly 2,000 commodities and displays them in a variety of novel, interactive and complementary ways, including time series, word clouds and geospatial maps. You can begin to explore Trading Consequences by clicking here and scrolling down to select one of the four search engines. Let us know what you think!

Bill Conlogue recently published Here and There: Reading Pennsylvania's Working Landscapes (Penn University State Press).

announcements

The following individuals received awards on March 15 at our conference in San Francisco:

George Perkins Marsh Prize for best book

Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters, Oxford University Press.

Alice Hamilton Prize for best article outside Environmental History

Alan Mikhail, Unleashing the Beast: Animals, Energy, and the Economy of Labor in Ottoman Egypt," American Historical Review (April 2013).

Leopold-Hidy Prize for best article in Environmental History (with Forest History Society)

Natalia Milanesio, "The Liberating Flame: Natural Gas Production in Peronist Argentina" (July 2013 issue).

Rachel Carson Prize for best dissertation

Andrew Stuhl, "Empires on Ice: Science, Nature, and the Making of the Arctic," University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Distinguished Scholar Award

James McCann

Distinguished Service Award

Paul Hirt

Public Outreach Project Award

Char Miller for his blog Golden Green  

Kate Brown received best book award from Fritz Davis, chair of George Perkins Marsh Prize Committee.

Alan Mikhail received a best article award.

Paul Hirt (pictured above with his wife Linda) received the Distinguished Service award.

for graduate students

Attending the World Congress in Portugal?

Margot Higgins and Adam Sundberg have volunteered to co-organize an informal student get-together in Portugal this July. Please contact them if you're interested in participating:

margothiggins@gmail.com and ads135@gmail.com 

Update on Grad Student Caucus

The ASEH Graduate Student Caucus, founded it 2011, has grown to over 60 members, and organized several activities at the 2014 San Francisco conference. In addition to the Graduate Student Reception, which hosted around 60 graduate students, the Caucus convened for our annual in-person meeting where the 18 members in attendance discussed future initiatives. Ideas ranged from expanding the number of graduate students on ASEH committees to organizing more mentoring opportunities at future conferences and expanding internet-based networking for graduate students and early-career scholars. The Caucus also formed a sub-committee to research possible on-line publishing options that could be hosted by the ASEH website.

The Caucus, led by outgoing Graduate Student Liaison Gregory Rosenthal, also organized two graduate-student focused panels at the conference. The Graduate Student Writing Workshop, back for a second year due to popular demand, grouped five faculty mentors with sixteen graduate students to work closely on the craft of writing. Graduate student participants applied in advance, and workshopped material ranging from dissertation chapters to articles.  "Meet the Presses," our second event, combined a round-table focused on de-mystifying academic publishing with a speed-networking session, where graduate students had three minutes to pitch an article or book to our two academic press editors and two journal editors. Both events were well attended and received excellent feedback from faculty, editors and graduate students alike, and the caucus looks forward to planning similarly useful events for the DC conference in 2015.

For questions about the Caucus, please email current ASEH Graduate Student Liaison Bathsheba Demuth, Bathsheba.demuth@berkeley.edu