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RCC Newsletter, Issue 21

December 2014

10.12.2014

Dear Friends of the Rachel Carson Center,

Last Thursday evening brought the long-awaited opening of ‘Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands,’ an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum conceptualized jointly by the Deutsches Museum and the Rachel Carson Center. The exhibition is the culmination of over two years of work: it was opened in a festive ceremony featuring a steel band and speeches by Achim Steiner (General Director, UN Environment Programme), Felix Finkbeiner (youth activist), and Jan Zalasiewicz (Director, Anthropocene Working Group, Leicester University). The exhibition itself was formally declared open when Paul Crutzen (Nobel Laureate), Wolfgang Heckl (Director General, Deutsches Museum), Nina Möllers (exhibition curator), Achim Steiner, and Helmuth Trischler (RCC Director/ Director of Research Deutsches Museum) cut the ribbon. See point 1 below for more about the Anthropocene project—we hope you will manage to visit the exhibition at some point, or, failing that, at least check out the digital one. And of course, that’s not all that we’ve been up to…

  1. All about the Anthropocene: In anticipation of the opening of the Anthropocene exhibition, the RCC and the Deutsches Museum sponsored a series of events and online exhibitions in autumn 2014. The Environment & Society Portal has profiled the exhibition with a series of online comics and an accompanying virtual exhibition.

    The Deutsches Museum sponsored the biennial ARTEFACTS conference, which took the Anthropocene as its topic; the museum also hosted the First International Meeting of Anthropocene Working Group (AWG). Meanwhile, in Berlin, the Anthropocene Campus (sponsored by the RCC, the Deutsches Museum, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt) brought together 100 young researchers for a two-week workshop on a potential Anthropocene curriculum for higher education

    Finally, an event called “The Anthropocene: Cabinet of Curiosities Slam,” held in Madison, Wisconsin, with our partners there and from KTH Stockholm, challenged researchers to suggest artefacts for a cabinet of curiosities from the age of the Anthropocene. The winning entries will be on display at the Deutsches Museum as part of the exhibition.

  2. We are pleased to announce the first call for fellows for Phase II of the RCC, with the fellowship period beginning September 2015. In addition to our writing fellowships, we are now offering interdisciplinary and outreach fellowships. The deadline for applications is 31 January 2015.

  3. The RCC kicked off the fall semester with an evening to remember—Jane Goodall spoke at LMU Munich to an audience of over 1400 people and ended the evening with a visit to the RCC.

  4. Environment & Society Portal Update: We have partnered with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University on a successful Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant to aggregate online environmental content through PressForward. Furthermore, a new virtual exhibition, ‘Water in Bogotá,’ will be online before Christmas. Check out the Portal for new articles in Arcadia: Online Explorations in Environmental History and new content in our Multimedia Library.

  5. Publications: Both of the RCC’s book series have published new volumes in the last few months. Patrick Kupper’s Creating Wilderness: A Transnational History of the Swiss National Park was published as volume 4 of Environment in History: International Perspectives with Berghahn Books and Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted's Rivers, Memory, and Nation-building: A History of the Volga and Mississippi Rivers (volume 5) was released just three weeks ago. Our German-language series, Umwelt und Gesellschaft, released volume 12, an edited collection on genetic engineering entitled Projektion Natur: Grüne Gentechnik im Fokus der Wissenschaften.

    RCC Perspectives
    released two new issues: ‘Crossing Mountains: The Challenges of Doing Environmental History,’ edited by Marcus Hall and Patrick Kupper, uses mountains as a common denominator around which to discuss overarching challenges of environmental history. ‘Energy (and) Colonialism, Energy (In)Dependence: Africa, Europe, Greenland, North America,’ edited by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga and Helmuth Trischler, presents five histories of colonial projects that transformed potential energy sources into mechanical energy for wealth production.

  6. The range of events sponsored by the RCC (or with a strong RCC involvement) during autumn 2014 was as broad as ever—click on the link below for more details about the event and a conference report:
  7. Upcoming Calls for Papers
  8. Upcoming Events:
  9. Alumni News: Our alumni have been active and productive over the past few months, and we are delighted to celebrate here two new professorships (Martin Knoll, Patrick Kupper), four new books/edited collections (Maurits Ertsen, Chris Pastore, Alexa Weik von Mossner, Thomas Zeller), several new articles (Eunice Blavascunas, Angelika Krebs), speaking engagements (Stefan Dorondel), committee appointments (Daisy Onyige), and newspaper profiles (Mike Hulme). Congratulations to all of them! Alumni wishing to pass on news should send an email to website@rcc.lmu.de.

As always, to stay up to date on the RCC, check out our website, Facebook page, and blog, or follow us on Twitter.

Best wishes,

The Rachel Carson Center