RCC Newsletter, Issue 09
December 2011
23.12.2011
Dear Friends of the RCC,
Happy Holidays from the RCC! Read on for our final 2011 update on RCC activities and events.
- We are excited to let you know about the release of a virtual trip to the RCC with our new image film, now available to view online.
- Explore and Discover! After two years of design and production work, the Environment & Society Portal, with three custom-designed interactive navigation tools (map viewer, timeline, and keyword explorer), is now online; users can traverse the globe, travel through time, and trace connections in environmental humanities.
- The RCC is currently taking applications for its fellowship cohort 2012-3. Post-doc and established scholars who research on the complex connections between nature and culture are encouraged to apply; please help us by distributing the call for applications to interested colleagues.
- 2012 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. In order to properly commemorate this landmark work, the essay contest has been expanded to encourage submissions from diverse age groups, and the deadline has been extended to 15 March 2012. Again, please help us by passing this call for essays on.
- Two new issues of RCC Perspectives, on Canada’s environment, culture, and history and environmental movements in Germany, are now online, available for perusal and download.
- Recent RCC Events:
Ecovillages as a Utopian model for the future? Ecovillage activists, political journalists, and academic researchers discussed the ecovillage phenomenon in a recent RCC workshop.
In October, the RCC went transatlantic in order to analyze the sea with the conference, “Final Frontiers: Exploring Oceans, Islands, and Coastal Environments,” which was held at the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine, United States.
The workshop, “Salmon Voices: Indigenous Peoples and the Fish Farming Industry,” marked the first time that indigenous people from Canada and Norway met to discuss their experiences of the salmon aquaculture industry.
The RCC is home to valuable ideas about precious metals! History went underground at a conference examining environmental perspectives on mining. - Upcoming RCC events:
The Lunchtime Colloquium schedule for January and February 2012 is now online; topics will include religion and climate change, postcolonial disaster, and radical environmentalism.
10 Jan: Nachhaltige Landnutzung und Ernährung (Sustainability Lecture Series)
11 Jan: A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (Green Visions Film Series)
24 Jan: Klimawandel: Prüfstein für nachhaltiges Handeln (Sustainability Lecture Series)
08 Feb: Die 4. Revolution (Green Visions Film Series)
14 Feb: Kultur der Nachhaltigkeit: Wohlstand oder Wachstum? (Sustainability Lecture Series)
16-18 Feb: Frost, Ice, and Snow: Cold Climate in Russian History (Conference in Moscow)
23-25 Feb: Wo Steht die Umweltethik? (Workshop) - Senator George McGovern visits the Center. Senator McGovern, a UN Ambassador for World Hunger, met with staff and fellows to discuss various environmental challenges, past and present.
- LMU Fellow Frank Uekötter has launched a German-language online resource, “Ökologische Erinnerungsorte,” which seeks to provide a deeper understanding of both environmental memories and their meaning for environmentalism today.
- The RCC Alumni Association is rapidly taking shape. Presidents Lawrence Culver and Hou Shen are already involved in planning a large meeting for all RCC Alumni to take place in Munich in August 2013, and one of the RCC Alumni, Stefania Gallini is organizing a workshop in Bogota, Colombia, in collaboration with the RCC.
- Fellows’ / Alumni News: Great Britain has shown its interest in environmental scholarship this autumn: Donald Worster was presented with an honorary doctorate from the University of Stirling in Scotland, while Maohong Bao gave a lecture on the Chinese “Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture” campaign at the University of Sussex. And, Stefan Dorondel won a CRASSH Fellowship in Cambridge.
Across the ocean, Timothy LeCain won the Montana State University Charles & Nora L. Wiley Faculty Award for Meritorious Research. - Staff News: Research Fellow Franziska Torma won the Gerald D. Feldman travel grant, supported by the Foundation of German Humanities Institutes Abroad (DGIA). The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reviewed the newly published book on feminist movements in Munich by PhD Coordinator Elisabeth Zellmer. And Director Christof Mauch gave two papers and appeared on state television at a conference in Florianopolis, Brazil.
To stay up to date on the RCC, check out our website, our Facebook page, or follow us on Twitter.
Best wishes for a peaceful festive season and a Happy New Year,
The Rachel Carson Center