RCC Newsletter, Issue 15

Dear Friends of the RCC,

We are pleased to announce that registration has opened for our biggest event in 2013: “Circulating Natures: Water—Food—Energy,” the seventh biennial conference of the European Society for Environmental History, to be held in Munich from 21-24 August. Those who sign up before 31 May qualify for the early bird discount rate. We hope you'll join us for four days of academic sessions, a keynote by Marion Nestle, green field trips in Munich and the surrounding area, evening receptions at historic locations throughout the city, a silent auction, and much more.

1. The Environment & Society Portal team is pleased to announce the publication of a new virtual exhibition, "The Wegener Diaries: Scientific Expeditions into the Eternal Ice." At its heart are the complete handwritten diaries from the three major Greenland expeditions of German polar researcher Alfred Wegener (1880–1930), made accessible for the first time in digital form. The exhibition also includes photos, documentary film footage, and a transcribed and translated digital edition of some two hundred selected diary pages.
   
   
2. January 2013 marked the start of another major RCC endeavor: The Anthropocene Project, which is a joint initiative of the RCC and the Deutsches Museum to produce a large-scale exhibition on the Anthropocene in 2014. The project involves collaborating institutions around the globe, first and foremost the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. The collaboration was launched with an opening event in Berlin, which included talks by many well-known scholars on the topic (video clips online) as well as artistic performances. A week later, the group reconvened in Munich for a workshop to investigate different kinds of media and communication strategies relating to the environment. This project has found global resonance, as seen through press coverage in English, Indonesian, Chinese, Portuguese, and many other languages.
   
   
3. Dennis L. Meadows, co-author of The Limits to Growth, visited Munich and the RCC in order to open the winter semester of the Sustainability Lecture Series. Before giving his talk to a packed crowd of over 600 people at the Amerika Haus, he visited the center and led staff and fellows through his 'Tower of Babylon' game before engaging in an open discussion with Carson Fellow Donald Worster. Video clips can all be found online.
   
   
4. The end of 2012 saw the RCC playing host to another set of important visitors: delegates from the German Green Party visited the RCC on their 2012 Energy Tour in order to gain more insight into how humanities scholarship can and should inform political debate.
   
   
5. The RCC is launching a new thematic research cluster on waste with at LMU Munich’s Center for Advanced Studies. This cluster will bring together international scholars working on the comparative history, cultural practices, and legal frameworks for managing waste in Munich for fellowships and programs. The thematic cluster is sponsoring the next Green Visions film series on waste; the season begins with Taste the Waste on 21 March.
   
   
6. Asian environments, small islands and natural hazards, energy resources in Europe, and resource exhaustion were the topics of recent workshops and panels supported by the RCC.
   
   
7. Calls for Papers:
   
   Mountains Across Borders: A Summer School in Environmental History, Lavin, Switzerland (deadline 22 March 2013)
   
   SOLCHA Summer School (deadline 23 March 2013)
   
   
8. Upcoming Events:
   
   21 Mar: Josh Berson on "'Original Affluence' and Ubiquitous Carnivory" (Lunchtime Colloquium)
   
   21 Mar: “Taste the Waste” (Green Visions Film Series)
   
   11 Apr: Peter Boomgaard on "Thirty Millennia of Environmental Change: Landscapes, Humans, and Other Animals" (Lunchtime Colloquium)
   
   11 Apr: “Into Eternity” (Green Visions Film Series)
   
   
9. Check out the newest additions to our fellows’ film portraits collection: Anthony Carrigan, Donatella De Rita, Eagle Glassheim, and Anya Zilberstein.
   
   
10. Staff News: The RCC is very pleased to welcome Robert Emmett, our new Director for Academic Programs. Click here for more information on Rob and his new role at the RCC. Vulpes Libris, a well-read literary blog, featured an interview with Managing Editor Katie Ritson and Communications Director Arielle Helmick on their work at the RCC.

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

Best wishes,

The Rachel Carson Center