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NEWS AND EVENTS IN THE HUMANITIES

Annual conferences immerse you in the research, culture, and hands-on work of your own or others' professional disciplines. Attending one more meeting given your existing time and budget commitments might seem ludicrous to you (or your partner, spouse, or employer). Yet participating in one of the leading conservation-oriented humanities conferences described below -- held by ASEH, ASLE, and ICEHO -- might be a highly effective way to enhance your conservation project or program's social, economic, cultural, and policy dimensions. All three welcome and promote interchange and collaborations among students, researchers, and practitioners in the humanities, social science, and natural sciences.

Founded in 1977, the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) analyzes the historical background of current environmental issues. ASEH members conduct research on a variety of topics including climate change, public lands policy, forestry, agricultural practices, fish and wildlife management, fire management, natural disasters, energy production, and environmental justice. This year's ASEH Annual Conference, which will be held 25 February - 1 March in Tallahassee, Florida, is themed Paradise Lost, Found, and Constructed: Conceptualizing & Transforming Landscapes Through History.

Highlights of the 2009 ASEH conference include a workshop on environmental justice with a hands-on unit on GIS mapping of eco-hazards and the ASEH Presidential Address by Nancy Langston, "Paradise Lost: Global Warming and Environmental History." Dan Simberloff will give the plenary address, "Charles Elton, Aldo Leopold, and the Rise of Modern Invasion Biology," and author David Quammen will present a keynote address. Also planned are four days of concurrent panel sessions and roundtables on diverse themes, two dozen poster presentations, book exhibits, and other special events.

SCB members will find ASEH meetings relatively intimate; these events generally attract 500-600 attendees. Field trips are a key component of ASEH meetings. All other activities adjourn for one afternoon so participants can attend the iconic birding trip, a local walking tour, or diverse programmed visits to conservation, environmental justice, and scientific research sites. Details are at www.aseh.net/conferences.

The 2010 annual conference of ASEH will be held in Portland, Oregon from 10-14 March. The call for papers, posters, and other activities is at ASEH's Web site. ASEH 2010 again will feature an environmental justice workshop as well as a workshop on the history and environmental issues of the Columbia River's National Park Service. The conference also will offer a "floating seminar" about -- and literally on -- the Willamette River. This seminar will address issues related to waterfront development, such as pollution, renewal, and sustainable practices.

The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) brings together teachers, writers, students, artists, and environmentalists interested in the natural world and its meanings and representations in language and culture. ASLE's eighth biennial conference, and its first outside the United States, Island Time: The Fate of Place in a Wired, Warming World, will take place 3-6 June 2009 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The 2009 theme reflects ASLE's interest in exploring intersecting questions of time and place, and of isolation and community, in a global era bereft of "islands" of nature isolated from history and technology. For more details about ASLE 2009, see http://asle.uvic.ca/index.cfm.

New to ASLE in 2009 are "paper jams," sessions of seven eight-minute presentations followed by 30-minute discussions. Paper jams are similar to SCB's speed presentation format, and are similarly welcoming to experimental or exploratory work -- potentially a great way for conservation biologists to enter the ASLE mix in 2011. Look for ASLE's 2011 Call for Papers at www.asle.org.

As a first-time participant in an ASLE meeting in 2009, I will join a roundtable on interdisciplinary conservation and environmental education co-organized by longtime SCB member Julianne Warren. In preparation, I would welcome correspondence from other SCB members about their programs' or institutions' progress and pitfalls in bridging gaps among humanities, social science, and natural science to forge workable interdisciplinary conservation pedagogy.

The First World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH, at http://wceh2009.org/) will be held from 4-8 August 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark and would be an inspiring humanities-oriented event following SCB's annual meeting in Beijing. The host of the Congress is the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations, whose membership includes ASEH, the European Society for Environmental History (http://eseh.org/), the Association of South Asian Environmental Historians (http://asaeh.org/), and more than a dozen other professional societies and institutions worldwide (links to all are at http://wceh2009.org/index.php/members-of-iceho). Many years in the planning, this first World Congress encompasses multiple spatial and temporal scales and disciplinary perspectives to address our world's intertwined histories of human-environment relationships and our challenges for creating a sustainable future.

Please send your queries, comments, and suggestions for this occasional Humanities Notes column to me (christenc@si.edu). I look forward to hearing from you.

Kate Christen
Humanities Representative, Board of Governors

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