History of Earth and Environmental Sciences

In anticipation of the total solar eclipse across North America on April 8, we will discuss the history of solar eclipse expeditions and experiences. Readings will include: Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, "The Social Event of the Season: Solar Eclipse Expeditions and Victorian Culture," Isis 84, no. 2 (1993): 252-77; Steve Ruskin, "'Among the Favored Mortals of the Earth': The Press, State Pride, and the Eclipse of 1878," Colorado Heritage (Spring 2008): 22-35; review of and excerpts from David Baron, American Eclipse (New York: Liveright, 2017).

We will discuss a work in progress by Laura Clerx, Boston College and Consortium Research Fellow, "'An article almost as necessary as cash': Engineering Economy in the Early Republic"

"Twilight at Noon?: Paul Crutzen, Albedo Enhancement, and the Historical Foundations of Geoengineering" 
Gerard Fitzgerald, Visiting Scholar, The Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities, University of Stavanger, and Lecturer, Department of Engineering and Society, University of Virginia
 
In 2006, the atmospheric chemist Paul Jozef Crutzen (1933-2021) published a pathbreaking and controversial paper in the journal Climatic Change entitled “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?” Crutzen, who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Mario J. Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone," devoted his scientific life to studying the complex relationship that certain molecules play in shaping our planetary atmosphere. Any balanced historical study of the evolution of human efforts toward geoengineering must touch upon Crutzen’s work in general, and his 2006 paper. My paper examines Crutzen’s work leading up to the 2006 publication, and how his research career on topics such as planetary ozone levels, climate change, nuclear winter, and even his “introduction” of the term “Anthropocene” in 2000 played a role in shaping how he came to see the possibilities for stratospheric geoengineering to recalibrate the reflectivity of the Earth’s atmosphere.  

We will be reading and discussing five short (500 word) summaries of research, based on an ASEH panel from 2022, which the authors -- Faizah Zakaria, Theresa Ventura, Claire Perrott, Adam Bobbette, and Daniella McCahey -- have expanded upon for an upcoming Isis focus section on twentieth-century volcanology. The beauty and violence of volcanoes have made them into a long source of human fascination. But while much attention has been paid to earlier eruptions like Vesuvius, Tambora, and Krakatoa, the relationships between volcanoes and history in the twentieth century has received less historiographical attention. This truly interdisciplinary group of scholars, who will be joining us for the discussion, include an agricultural historian, a historian of science, a historian of religion, an environmental historian, and a historical geographer, based in four countries and focusing on many different regions. Yet all have found the shadows of volcanoes looming, to one extent or another, over their work. 

Fraser Livingston, Introduction to "Losing Longleaf: Forestry and Conservation in the Southern Coastal Plain" and Chapter VI, "Frankenstein Forests: Federal Forestry and Longleaf Conservation in the Twentieth Century"

'Whither the Sub-Tropics? Medical Geography and Geographic Imaginaries of a Shifting Climate"
Elaine Lafay, Rutgers University

As a final wrap up discussion for the year, we will discuss opportunities for working group members to publish in several scholarly journals, including editorial representatives from the new Animal History journal (Dan Vandersommers, Susan Nance), as well as longer established journals: Environmental History (Mark Hersey), Isis (Alix Hui), and Agricultural History (Tom Okie). We will discuss not only the current landscape for journal publishing, but also -- as a part of our annual theme this year on Small Stories with Big Significance -- how to frame the larger significance of specific projects for the audiences of each of these journals.
 

"Engineering on Trial: The 1920 Nile Projects Controversy and Epistemologies of Measurement”
Anthony Greco, University of California, Santa Barbara
This work-in-progress explores how medieval Arabic literary traditions, Egyptian nationalist engineers, and British physical scientists shaped the methods of hydraulic science in the Nile Valley of 1920. The physical and social networks which produced and circulated hydraulic data on the Nile reflected the complex relationship between science, colonialism, and national liberation. 
 

We will discuss a recent article that was awarded the Rainger prize (for early career scholarship in the history of the earth and environmental sciences) at last November's History of Science Society meeting:
Claire Isabel Webb, "Gaze-Scaling: Planets as Islands in Exobiologists' Imaginaries," Science as Culture 30, no. 3 (2021): 391-415.
As part of our conversation, we can also discuss the special journal section on Island Imaginaries that this article was a part of, and the editors' introduction has been included in the advance reading, after Webb's article: Mascha Gugganig & Nina Klimburg-Witjes, "Island Imaginaries: Introduction to a Special Section," Science as Culture 30, no. 3 (2021): 321-341.
 

Catherine Dunlop (Montana State University)
The readings this week approach the theme of “Small Stories with Big Significance” through the lens of the mistral, an iconic local wind that blows through the southern French region of Provence.  The three articles invite readers to think about the connections among regional weather, culture, and identity in the modern world.  These pieces all draw from material in Catherine Dunlop’s book manuscript Windswept:  The Mistral and the Making of Provence, forthcoming with University of Chicago Press, 2024.

We will discuss selections from two related and recently published books:
 
Laura J. Martin, Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2022), introduction and chapter 5, which examines the practice of ecosystem science through radioecology, destruction as a method of study, and other disturbances.
 
Paul S. Sutter, Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015), introduction and chapter 5, which examines the larger implications of a very local story about soil scientists and conservationists interpreting a site of dramatic landscape transformation.
 
The two authors will open the discussion with comments on each other's books.

"'A Great Responsibility': Biodiversity Crisis in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew"
Isobel Akerman, Cambridge University
This paper examines the integration of biodiversity crisis into the research, governance, and outreach of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It explores the environmental, political, and institutional context of Kew in the late 1980s and 1990s, and uses Kew’s 1998 public exhibition ‘Plants + People’ as a case study to question how and why environmental knowledge was made to move between a relatively small group of botanists and a wider cohort of publics.

Jeremy Vetter (University of Arizona), one of the working group's co-conveners, will discuss one of his ongoing projects, Agate: The Biography of a Scientific Field Site, building on previous journal articles to explain how he is working to turn it into a book, and to reconceptualize it in the process. This will serve as an opening example of our intended theme for this academic year in this working group -- "Small Stories with Big Significance" -- and we will also discuss this theme in more general terms. We will encourage other group members to consider sharing their own research later in the year that might fit within this theme:
 
Small Stories with Big Significance. Even as more specialized subfields emerge such as ecology, climatology, ocean science, energy, paleontology, and agricultural science, what big questions and issues unite all of us as historians of earth and environmental sciences? How can we use specific and unabashedly local or smaller-scale case studies in specific places and subfields to address these questions? How can the rapidly worsening environmental crises in which we find ourselves that seem to unfold on a global scale, such as climate change or biodiversity loss, be illuminated by histories of specific places and projects? What leverage do these specific histories of science give us? What are the strengths and weaknesses of embracing localized case studies? How might microhistories of science in the climate crisis, and of other environmental challenges, go beyond “big history” to re-embrace small stories as well, but with a challenge to make them speak to larger questions?
 

We will discuss podcasting as a means of reaching wider audiences in the history of science and environmental history, drawing on the experiences of three podcasters, who have all agreed to join us for the conversation:
Sky Johnston, 90 Second Narratives, https://skymichaeljohnston.com/90secnarratives
Kate Carpenter, Drafting the Past, http://draftingthepast.com
Sean Kheraj, Nature's Past, https://www.seankheraj.com/category/podcast, http://niche-canada.org/naturespast/

Emily Pawley (Dickinson College) will discuss her recent alternative sabbatical leave projects that involves public facing work on connecting history with activism on climate change and racial justice, especially her work as part of the Environmental Historians Action Collaborative (EHAC).
 

We will discuss two related items by Carlos Haag (PhD candidate at York University): a published paper, "The English Hunger for Desolate Places: The Royal Society Mato Grosso Expedition, 1967-1969," and a draft of another paper on the same topic, "The Royal Society of London Expedition to Brazil: Science and Empire in the Cold War (1967-1969)."

We will discuss four articles from a forthcoming special forum in Environmental History (April 2022): 
Germán Vergara & Emily Wakild, “Extinction and Its Interventions in the Americas” (forum introduction)
Peter S. Alagona & Alexis M. Mychajliw, “Southern California's Three-Bear Shuffle: Survival, Extinction, and Recovery in an Urban Biodiversity Hotspot”
Reinaldo Funes Monzote & Etiam A. Pérez Fleitas, "In Grave Danger: A Brief Environmental History of the Cuban Crocodile"
Elizabeth Hennessy & James P. Gibbs, "When De-extinction Really Happens: The Revival of the Floreana Giant Tortoises in the Galapagos Archipelago"
Two of the authors, Emily Wakild and Elizabeth Hennessy, are planning to join us for the discussion.

We will discuss a new article that was awarded the Rainger prize (for early career scholarship in the earth and environmental sciences) at the recent History of Science Society virtual meeting:
 
Whitney Barlow Robles, "The Rattlesnake and the Hibernaculum: Animals, Ignorance, and Extinction in the Early American Underworld," William and Mary Quarterly 78, no. 1 (January 2021): 3-44.
The author will join us for the discussion of this prize-winning article, and we will also have the opportunity to discuss her noteworthy public/digital history work, including a recently launched digital exhibition that she created with some students at Dartmouth, The Kitchen in the Cabinet: Histories of Food and Science, which can be found at https://kitcheninthecabinet.com/.
 
At the beginning of our gathering, we will also briefly hold the annual meeting of the Earth and Environment Forum of the History of Science Society, which has the same topical purview as this working group.

We will discuss two articles from a recent special issue of Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (vol. 50, nos. 1-2, 2020), which was a special double issue for the 50th anniversary of the journal:
 
Matthias Dörries, “Hot Climate, Cold War”
 
Melissa Charenko, “Reconstructing Climate: Paleoecology and the Limits of Prediction during the 1930s Dust Bowl”
 
The first of these is a brief historiographical overview of the history of climate science that has been published in the journal, which has published several notable articles over the years. The second of these is a standard original research article, which just by coincidence happened to be published in the same issue of the journal. These articles will help us launch a discussion about the history of climate science as an example of a prominent topical subfield within the history of earth and environmental sciences that has great potential for engaging in wider public discourse and policy debates.
 
I am pleased to say that the author of the second article, Melissa Charenko, who is now an assistant professor at Michigan State University, is planning to join us for the discussion.

For our first session of the year, we will revisit the special focus section of Isis from 2005 on the Generalist Vision in the History of Science (vol. 96, no. 2, pp. 224-251), in order to open up a discussion of how well the contributors' call for scholarly work that speaks to a wider audience has been realized during the past 16 years, in the history of earth and environmental sciences. Participants should (re)read the introduction to the focus section by Rob Kohler, and are encouraged to (re)read the other three thought provoking and stimulating essays too, which are all relatively brief, by Paula Findlen, Steve Shapin, and David Kaiser. Each participant will then be invited to introduce themselves, and each attendee will be encouraged to highlight a work (article, book, etc.) by some other scholar in the history of the earth and environmental sciences during the past 16 years, which serves as a successful example of speaking to a wider (scholarly and/or public) audience beyond niche specialists. We will then use this opening discussion as a springboard for spending the rest of the year discussing the problem of how historians of earth and environmental sciences can address not only wider audiences within the scholarly community but also contribute to public engagement around pressing environmental crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss.

Elena Aronova, assistant professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will present and discuss chapter 3, "Nikolai Vavilov, Genogeography, and History’s Past Future," as well as the introduction, from her new book, Scientific History: Experiments in History and Politics from the Bolshevik Revolution to the End of the Cold War (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

Daniel Vandersommers, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Dayton, will present on the introduction and a selected chapter from his book manuscript: "Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo: Stories of Science, Culturre, and Environment." The manuscript is under contract with University Press of Kansas.

Our next speaker will be David Munns, Associate Professor at John Jay College of the City University of New York. We will discuss the Introduction and Chapter 1 from his forthcoming book: David P.D. Munns and Käriin Nickelsen, "Far Beyond the Mood: A History of Life Support Systems in the Space Age." Pittsburgh: Unversity of Pittsburgh Press, 2021. 

We will discuss selections from two related and recently or soon-to-be published books:
 
Jacob Darwin Hamblin, The Wretched Atom: America's Global Gamble with Peaceful Nuclear Technology (New York: Oxford Universty Press, 2021), introduction and chapter 5. (PDF is available in the restricted login area for group members)
 
Christine Keiner, Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal (Athens: University of Georgia Press Press, 2020), introduction and chapter 4. Please see the following open access link to read the book: https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780820358635

The two authors will open the discussion with comments on each other's books.

We will discuss selections from two related and recently published books in the history of food, agriculture, environment, and science:
 
Benjamin R. Cohen, Pure Adulteration: Cheating on Nature in the Age of Manufactured Food (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), prologue and chapter 4.
 
Stuart McCook, Coffee Is Not Forever: A Global History of the Coffee Leaf Rust (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019), introduction and chapter 5.
 
The two authors will open the discussion with comments on each other's books.

We will discuss a new article that was awarded the Rainger prize (for early career scholarship in the earth and environmental sciences) at the recent History of Science Society virtual meeting:
 
Emily M. Kern, "Archaeology Enters the 'Atomic Age': A Short History of Radiocarbon, 1946-1960," British Journal for the History of Science 53, no. 2 (June 2020).
 
During our gathering, we will also hold the annual meeting of the Earth and Environment Forum of the History of Science Society, which has the same topical purview as this working group.

Group Building and Extended Introductions. For our opening meeting of this academic year, instead of a typical workshop or presentation, we will try something new, to help everyone become better acquainted with one another: we invite all participants who attend to give an extended introduction of themselves along with a brief (1-2 minute) elevator pitch of a research project they are working on, followed by a question or two after each one from someone else who is there.

We will discuss a chapter in progress by Aaron Thomas of Mississippi State University drawn from his dissertation titled "Controlling Christmas: An Environmental History of Natural and Artificial Christmas Trees." 

We will discuss a chapter in progress by Claire Perrott (University of Arizona):
"The Cultural and Environmental History of Parícutin in Mexico: Volcano as  Science, 1943-1952"

We will discuss an article in progress by Anna Graber (University of Minnesota), "Underground Evangelizing: Theodicy and Orthodoxy in Mikhail Lomonosov's Theory of Earth."

We will discuss a chapter in progress by Mary Richie McGuire (Virginia Tech), "'Reconstructing the Past, Constructing the Present': Doing Bioconstitutional History," which is from her project “Translating Natural Knowledge in the Age of Revolution: Tobacco, Science, and the Rights of Man and Nature in the Art of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1795 to 1820."

We will discuss selections from two related and recently published books:
 
Pablo Gomez, The Experiential Carribean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), introduction and chapter 5.
 
Cameron Strang, Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500-1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), introduction and chapter 4.
 
The two authors will open the discussion with comments on each other's books.

We will discuss a chapter in progress by Hadeel Assali (Columbia University), "Moses Everywhere: Geology and Southern Palestine."

We will discuss selections from two related and recently published books on the history of scale in the environmental sciences, by Deborah Coen and Perrin Selcer:
 
Deborah Coen, Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), introduction and chapter 3
 
Perrin Selcer, The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), introduction and chapter 4
 
The two authors will open the discussion with comments on each other's books.

We will discuss the recently published collection, A Living Past: Environmental Histories of Modern Latin America (Berghahn, 2018), edited by John Soluri, Claudia Leal, and Jose Augusto Padua. In particular, we will discuss chapter 7, by Stuart McCook, "Prodigality and Sustainability: The Environmental Sciences and the Quest for Development" along with the volume's introduction (by the editors) and epilogue by J.R. McNeill.
For our conversation, we will be joined by Stuart McCook and John Soluri.

We will discuss selections from the recent special thematic issue of the British Journal for the History of Science on "Science and Islands in Indo-Pacific Worlds" (vol. 51, no. 4, 2018), which includes several articles on the earth and environmental sciences. 
Two contributors to that issue, Genie Yoo and Geoff Bil, will join us. The reading selection includes the introduction by editors Sebestian Kroupa, Stephanie Mawson, and Dorit Brixius; Genie's paper ("Wars and wonders: the inter-island information networks of Georg Everhard Rumphius"); and Geoff's paper ("Imperial vernacular: phytonymy, philology and disciplinarity in the Indo-Pacific, 1800–1900"). 

We will discuss a work in progress by Alexandra Hui, "Listening to Extinction: The Silences of Species at the End of the Holocene"

We will discuss the recent Osiris volume on "Science and Capitalism" focusing especially on these two articles related to the earth and environmental sciences:
 
Pawley, Emily. "Feeding Desire: Generative Environments, Meat Markets, and the Management of Sheep Intercourse in Great Britain, 1700-1750," Osiris 33 (2018): 47-62.
 
Lucier, Paul. "Comstock Capitalism: The Law, the Lode, and the Science." Osiris 33 (2018): 210-231.
 
You are also encouraged to read the introduction by the editors, and you are invited to browse other articles in the volume, some of which are by authors who have worked in the history of earth and environmental sciences.

For our Nov. 7 conversation we will discuss selections (the Intro and ch. 3 & 7) from the recently published book, A Primer for Teaching Environmental History: Ten Design Principles (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), with the co-authors, Emily Wakild and Michelle Berry. Please bring your thoughts and questions about designing and teaching environmental history courses to this discussion.

We will discuss selections from two related and recently published books on the history of movement and exchange in the environmental sciences (agricultural science and tropical biology) between the United States and Latin America/Caribbean, by Tore Olsson and Megan Raby:
 
Tore Olsson, Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the U.S. and Mexican Countryside (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), intro and chapter 4 (and 5 if you have extra time)
 
Megan Raby, American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), intro and chapter 1, available at https://uncpress.flexpub.com/preview/american-tropics
 
The two authors will open the discussion with comments on each other's books.

We will discuss selections from two related and recently published books on the history of science, technology, and the environment in Latin America:
 
Buckley, Eve E. Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. (Intro and ch. 5)
 
Wolfe, Mikael D. Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. (Intro and ch. 4)
 
The two authors will open the discussion with comments on each other's books.
 
Note: This is the discussion that was postponed from last December due to technical difficulties.

Draft chapter by Gabriel Henderson (American Institute of Physics),
"Global 2000 and the Politics of Neo-Malthusian Alarm, 1972-1984"
which examines the influential "Global 2000" report on environmental policy, produced during the Carter Administration, along with the primary source text itself.

Selections from two related and recently published books on the history of chemicals, agriculture, and the environment:

Vail, David D. Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America's Grasslands since 1945. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2018.

Davis, Frederick R. Banned: A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.

The two authors opened the discussion with comments on each other's books.

We discussed the recent Osiris volume on "Data Histories" focusing especially on these two articles related to the earth and environmental sciences:
 
Benson, Etienne. "A Centrifuge of Calculation: Managing Data and Enthusiasm in Early Twentieth-Century Bird Banding," Osiris 32 (2017), 286-306.
 
Aronova, Elena. "Geophysical Datascapes of the Cold War: Politics and Practices of the World Data Centers in the 1950s and 1960s." Osiris 32 (2017): 307-327.
 
Elena and Etienne both presented to open the discussion by providing some background on how the volume came together, what they see as the key contributions and debates it offers, and how their own articles connect those issues to the history of the earth and environmental sciences.
 
Also recommended are the introduction by the editors, which is included in the file below, and other articles in the volume, such as those by Staffan Mu:ller-Wille (on natural history) and David Sepkoski (on paleontology).

POSTPONED until spring due to technical difficulties
We will discuss selections from two related and recently published books on the history of science, technology, and the environment in Latin America:

Buckley, Eve E. Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. (Intro and ch. 5)

Wolfe, Mikael D. Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. (Intro and ch. 4)

The two authors will open the discussion with comments on each other's books.

We discussed two recently published papers on the history of climate change, which take very different approaches to the topic, with discussion opened by James Bergman:
Supran, Geoffrey, and Naomi Oreskes. "Assessing Exxonmobil's Climate Change Communications (1977-2014)." Environmental Research Letters 12 (2017).
Coen, Deborah R. "Big Is a Thing of the Past: Climate Change and Methodology in the History of Ideas." Journal of the History of Ideas 77 (2016): 305-21.
 

We will discuss two thematically related papers: a work in progress by Frank Zelko (University of Vermont, who will be present with us via teleconference), "Optimizing Nature: Invoking the ‘Natural’ in the Struggle over Water Fluoridation" and a recently published article by Linda Nash, "From Safety to Risk: The Cold War Contexts of American Environmental Policy," Journal of Policy History 29 (2017): 1-33.

Our theme was Polar Science. Adrian Howkins (Colorado State University), author of Frozen Empires: An Environmental History of the Antarctic Peninsula (Oxford, 2016) and Andrew Stuhl (Bucknell University), author of Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Inuit Lands (Chicago, 2016) will open the discussion by commenting on each others' books.

Note Special Day.

Elaine LaFay, from the University of Pennsylvania, presented “’The slandered torrid zone’: Medicine, Botany, and the Imperial Vision of an American Tropics along the U.S. Gulf Coast, 1820 – 1840.”

The group continued its discussion of climate history with:

• Oreskes, Naomi, Erik M. Conway and Matthew Shindell. “From Chicken Little to Dr. Pangloss: William Nierenberg, Global Warming, and the Social Deconstruction of Scientific Knowledge.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 38 (1) (Winter 2008): 109-152.
• Weart, Spencer. “The idea of anthropogenic global climate change in the 20th century.” Climate Change 1, (January/February 2010): 67-81.
• Weart, Spencer. 2005. “Depicting Global Warming.” Environmental History 10 (October 2005): 770-75.

Optional / Recommended:

• Nierenberg, Nicolas, Walter R. Tschinkel and Victoria J. Tschinkel. “Early Climate Change Consensus at the National Academy: The Origins and Making of Changing Climate.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 40(3) (Summer 2010): 318-349.
• Lepore, Jill. “[Autumn of the Atom]: The Atomic Origins of Climate Science.” The New Yorker (January 30, 2017). New Yorker Online.

Note Special Day. Discussion of the "virtual issue" on climate history recently published online by Environmental History. https://academic.oup.com/envhis/pages/virtual_edition_on_climate_change including articles by Lydia Barnett, "The Theology of Climate Change: Sin as Agency in the Enlightenment's Anthropocene" and Joshua P. Howe, "This Is Nature; This Is Un-Nature: Reading the Keeling Curve" along with any other articles that interest you

Tiago Saraiva (Drexel University), “Frantz Fanon in LA: Cloning Oranges and American Democracy in the Global South.”

Catherine Dunlop (Montana State University), author of Cartophilia: Maps and the Search for Identity in the French-German Borderland (Chicago, 2015) and Bill Rankin (Yale University), author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 2016) opened the discussion by commenting on each others' books.

Abe Gibson of Arizona State introduced selections from his new book, Feral Animals in the American South, Cambridge University Press, 2016

Members in the Philadelphia area were invited to attend a local screening of Peter Galison and Robb Moss's new film, Containment (2015), about nuclear waste sites and the challenge of communicating their danger to humanity 10,000 years in the future, followed by a discussion with Peter Galison: here.

Elaine LaFay of the University of Pennsylvania introduced her paper "'On the Teeth of the Wind': Medical Meteorology and the American Empire Along the Antebellum U.S. Gulf Coast."

Note special day. Nick Shapiro, research fellow at CHF joined the group for a discussion of his recent work published in Cultural Anthropology, "Attuning to the Chemosphere: Domestic Formaldehyde, Bodily Reasoning, and the Chemical Sublime." The article is available for download at www.culanth.org/articles/781-attuning-to-the-chemosphere-domestic.

The group discussed a recent forum on "Technology, Ecology, and Human Health since 1850," Environmental History 20 (2015): 710-804. The group's conveners (Benson, Roberts, and Vetter) began the conversation by introducing specific themes and topics relevant to their own work.

Larry Kessler from Temple Univ. shared his paper, "'Overcoming Nature by Nature': Biological Pest Control and the Campaign for Hawaiian Annexation."

Lisa Ruth Rand of the University of Pennsylvania introduced her paper "Under the Copper Curtain: Project West Ford and the Roots of Outer Space Environmentalism, 1958-1964."

Jeremy Vetter of the University of Arizona introduced his paper, "Field Stations and the Problem of Scale: Local, Regional, and Global at the Desert Lab"

Mary Mitchell of the University of Pennsylvania introduced her paper, "Falling Out: Challenging Atmospheric Nuclear Testing in the Domestic Courts"

Jody Roberts of the Chemical Heritage Foundation introduced his book chapter, "Re-Inventing Green Chemistry: Alternative Histories for a Sustainable Science"

Rebecca Onion introduced selections from Lawrence Badash, A Nuclear Winter's Tale: Science and Politics in the 1980s Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009, and Peter Stearns and Timothy Haggerty. "The Role of Fear: Transitions in American Emotional Standards for Children, 1850-1950." The American Historical Review 96, no. 1 (February 1, 1991): 63–94.

The group discussed Daniel Schneider's Hybrid Nature: Sewage Treatment and the Contradictions of the Industrial Ecosystem.

Rebecca Onion of PACHS introduced selections from New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies, eds. Sara Pritchard, Dolly Jorgenson, Finn Arne Jorgenson, U of Pittsburgh Press, 2013.

Paul Sabin of Yale University introduced selections from his The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth's Future (Yale UP, 2013)

Jacob Hamblin of Oregon State introduced selections from his book Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism

L. Ruth Rand introduced her Orbital Decay: Space Junk and the Environmental History of a Global Commons, 1957-2009

Jody Roberts introduced his draft book chapter, Politics in a Bottle

Jeffery Brideau introduced his draft dissertation chapter, An Inland Seacoast? The Origins of the Seaway Idea and Construction of Bi-National Interest

Jeffery Brideau introduced the Introduction from Confluence: The Nature of Technology and the Remaking of the Rhône by Sara B. Pritchard.

Jody Roberts introduced the collection of essays The Future of Environmental History: Needs and Opportunities published by the Rachel Carson Center.

Building a Protective Web: CHESS and the Challenges of System Building in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1969-1977 by Jongmin Lee of Virginia Tech.

Group discussion of A Landscape of Energy Abundance: Anthracite Coal Canals and the Roots of American Fossil Fuel Dependence, 1820-1860 by Christopher F. Jones

The Nose as Sanitary Agent: Scenting the Home by Melanie Kiechle, CHF

Jody Roberts will introduce Climate for Change, or How to Create a Green Modernity? by Ulrich Beck Theory Culture Society 2010 27: 254 http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/27/2-3/254 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263276409358729 and A New Climate for Society by Sheila Jasanoff Theory Culture Society 2010 27: 233 http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/27/2-3/233 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263276409361497

The Cosmopolitan Society and Its Enemies by Ulrich Beck Theory Culture Society 2002 19: 17 and Science for the Post-normal Age by Silvio 0. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz Futures, Volume 25, Issue 7, September 1993, Pages 739-755

Introduction to Hidden Waters: Groundwater Histories of Iran and the Mediterranean by Abigail Schade, Columbia University

Unruly Technology and Fractured Oversight by Jody Roberts, Chemical Heritage Foundation