RCC Newsletter, Issue 16

Dear Friends of the RCC,

Registration is open for “Circulating Natures: Water—Food—Energy,” the seventh biennial conference of the European Society for Environmental History hosted by the Rachel Carson Center, to be held 21–24 August 2013 in Munich. All participants who register online before 31 May will receive an early bird discount.

1. The PhD program Environment and Society announced its call for candidates to join the interdisciplinary doctoral program. Interested candidates should apply online by 1 June 2013.
2. The RCC has joined the European Consortium for Humanities Institutes and Centres (ECHIC), an initiative that aims to strengthen innovative humanities research and advocate for its social and political relevance in Europe. Current RCC fellow and ECHIC chairman Poul Holm and RCC Director of Academic Programs Rob Emmett participated in the ECHIC annual meeting on the theme of digital publication in the humanities, hosted at the University of Nottingham Centre for Advanced Studies.
3. Publications
• RCC Perspectives 2012, Issue 10 on Mining in Central Europe: Perspectives from Environmental History, edited by Frank Uekoetter, has been published online.
• The first issue in a new cooperation between the journal Global Environment and the RCC has been published. Entitled Environmental Change and Migration in History and edited by Uwe Lübken, this special issue takes stock of current and historical episodes of migration in connection with climatic and environmental events.
• A sample e-book version (beta) of RCC Perspectives 2012, Issue 7 is available. All issues for 2013 will be published as PDF and e-book files for better accessibility.
• RCC Perspectives 2013, Issue 1, has gone to press and will be available online soon. Watch this space for Eco-Images: Historical Views and Political Strategies (forthcoming) edited by Gisela Parak.
4. Call for Papers:
• ESEH Best article prize (due by 1 May 2013)
5. Fellows and Alumni News:
• Carson fellow Ellen Arnold presented on the environmental imagination of the early middle ages at the 54th Mini-Symposium of the Center for Environmental History in Vienna on 21 March 2013.
• Carson fellow Frank Zelko gave a keynote lecture at the conference From Instants to Eons: Time in Environment and Environmental History at the Centre for Environmental History in Estonia (KAJAK), Tallinn University.
• Carson fellow Thomas Lekan has been named the new Director of the History Center in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina. The goal of the Center is to nurture the scholarship of faculty members within the History Department at USC, as well as that of historically-inclined scholars outside of the department, through speaker series, workshops, works-in-progress seminars, and other public outreach.
• Research fellow Julia Herzberg published her book Gegenarchive: Bäuerliche Autobiographik zwischen Zarenreich und Sowjetunion [Counter-archives: Peasant Autobiography between the Tsars and Soviet Union], which analyzes the ways alternative models of society developed from the production, publication, and reception of peasant autobiographies and diaries through the 1930s.
• Alumni fellow Bron Taylor has published “Resistance: Do the Means Justify the Ends?" in the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2013. This annual report, which is translated into many languages and distributed internationally through multiple publishing agreements, is one of the most widely read environmental publications.
• Alumni fellow Shane McCorristine published the article, “Searching for Franklin: a Contemporary Canadian Ghost Story” in the British Journal of Canadian Studies 26, no. 1 (2013). McCorristine explores the “phantasmic nature” of the wrecks of Sir John Franklin’s 1845 Arctic expedition in the modern Canadian imagination.
6. Staff News:
• Wilko Hardenberg has been appointed DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor of environmental history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from August 2013. Forward!
• Welcome to all new staff members who have joined the RCC since March, including two new editors, Maeve Storey and Marielle Dado, and two new members of the Digital Portal team, Jesse Ramirez and Susanne Darabas.
• Staff moves: Martin Spenger is now serving as the RCC Library Associate. In addition to managing acquisitions for the RCC library, Martin also provides IT support when he is not working on his PhD in US environmental history. Rachel Shindelar is serving as Acting Communications Director while Arielle Helmick is on leave. Rachel has been a valued member of our editing team since January 2012, and will continue to be involved in RCC publications.
7. Upcoming Events:
• 25 Apr: Karen Oslund, “Seals, Musk Oxen, and Whales: The Long Nineteenth Century in Greenland and Canada” (Lunchtime Colloquium)
• 2 May: Poul Holm, “Fishing Across the North Atlantic: The Importance of Marine Resources around 1600” (Lunchtime Colloquium)
• 3 May: John Broome, “The Public and Private Morality of Climate Change”
• 8 May: Warwick Fox, “General Ethics and the Theory of Responsive Cohesion”
• 8 May: "Is there a future without waste?" podium discussion. Inaugural event for the Center for Advanced Studies research initiative on "Waste and Society" (in German)
• 16 May: Ellen Arnold, “Rivers and the Medieval Environmental Imagination” (Lunchtime Colloquium)
• 16 Apr: Plastic Planet, (Green Visions Film Series)
• 23 May: Thomas Lekan, “Beyond the Serengeti: Tourism, the Cold War, and West Germany’s Environmental Mission in East Africa” (Lunchtime Colloquium)
• 24 May: 6:00 p.m., co-sponsored special lecture, Jeff Hou on “Urban Gardens and Insurgent Placemaking”

Stay in touch with the RCC via our website, Facebook page, blog, and Twitter feed.

Best wishes,

The Rachel Carson Center