Envirotech, a special interest group within the Society for the History of Technology and the American Society for Environmental History, invites nominations for the 2019 Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Article Prize. The Tarr Prize recognizes the best article published in either a journal or article collection on the relationship between technology and the environment in history.

To be eligible for this prize, the article must have been published between October 1, 2017, and March 31, 2019. Articles originally published in any language are welcome, but applicants must provide a translation of non-English articles. The Tarr Prize carries a cash award of $350 and will be conferred at the Society for the History of Technology meeting in Milan, Italy, October 24-27, 2019.

To apply, send your article and a brief curriculum vitae (one page Word or PDF files only please) to envirotechtarrprize@gmail.com. The deadline for nominations is June 15, 2019. The winner of the prize will be notified by the end of July.

Envirotech is pleased to announce the winner of the 2016-2017 Joel A. Tarr Prize. As envirotech grows as a field, so does the breadth and depth of its scholarship. This year’s Tarr Prize submissions included a wealth of articles that offered new directions in field–defining topics like risk, infrastructure, and pollution. The submissions also touched on newer areas of historical research and showed the range of topics withinenvirotech, as well as how an envirotechnical focus can enrich other areas of historical inquiry and shed light on contemporary problems. The submissions spanned the globe—indeed, even extending beyond the earth—across a wide historical time period and represented scholars from a wide range of institutions and career stages. 

Amidst this exceptionally strong field, the committee, Etienne Benson, Aleksandra Kobiljski, and Kellen Backer, selected Camille Cole’s “Precarious Empires: A Social and Environmental History of Steam Navigation on the Tigris,” as the prize winner. Cole’s work links the history of technology, environmental history, and the history of empire through a case study of the steamship in Southern Iraq. Based on a rich array of archival sources in multiple languages,it is also historiographically engaged and brings an envirotechnical focus to a region that has received too little attention.The article follows steamships entering the Tigris, showing how they were transformative, even if not in the ways intended. The idea of precariousness stands at the core of Cole’s study, showing howenvironmental and social conditions helped to create an empire that was difficult to control—both for the British and for the Ottoman empires. Alluvial and marsh environments undermined steamships at the same time that steamships created new avenues for empires to expand, while also providing new opportunities for tribal polities and the local shipping industry. Cole’s work complicates the story of imperial technologies by showing how, in this instance, steamships were “not conquering, but not quite conquered by the river or the marsh-based tribal polities.”  It is an impressive study that opens up new pathways for envirotech historians to pursue. 

The Envirotech Special Interest Group is pleased to announce the Joy Parr Travel Grant for the upcoming 2017 American Society for Environmental History conference. Eligibility for the award is limited to those presenting a paper addressing the interrelated histories of environment and technology at the ASEH meeting in Chicago March 29 – April 2, 2017. The grant is available to current graduate students, recent Ph.D.s (earned within three years), and independent scholars. The application is due by Wednesday, March 15, 2017. The winner will receive a check for $400 at the Envirotech breakfast meeting during the conference.

Applicants should complete the attached questionnaire and email it along with a one or two page C.V. to envirotechtravelaward@gmail.com. Any questions should be addressed to Kellen Backer and submitted by email to envirotechtravelaward@gmail.com.

Application form.

The Envirotech Special Interest Group is pleased to announce a $400 travel grant for the upcoming 2016 American Society for Environmental History conference. Eligibility for the award is limited to those presenting a paper addressing the interrelated histories of environment and technology at the ASEH meeting in Seattle, WA on March 30–April 3. The grant is available to current graduate students, recent Ph.D.s (earned within three years) and independent scholars. The application is due by Monday, March 14, 2016. The winner will receive a check for $400 at the Envirotech breakfast meeting during the conference.

Envirotech, a special interest group within the Society for the History of Technology and the American Society for Environmental History, invites nominations for the 2015 Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Article Prize. The Tarr Prize recognizes the best article published in either a journal or article collection on the relationship between technology and the environment in the past. The prize committee will consider all publications that address the intersections of environment and technology and is particularly interested in those that give new insights into interactions between histories and their publics. Articles originally published in any language are welcome, but applicants must provide a translation of non-English articles. To be eligible for the 2015 prize, the article must be published between June 16, 2014 and November 15, 2015.

The Tarr Prize carries a cash award of $350 and will be conferred at the American Society for Environmental History meeting in Seattle, Washington.

Send one copy of your article and a brief curriculum vitae (one page Word or PDF files only please) to tarrprize2015@gmail.com to be considered. The deadline for submissions is December 18, 2015. Winners will be announced in early February.

Andrew Denning has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Joel A. Tarr Prize.

The members of Envirotech are pleased to announce that Andrew Denning has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Joel A. Tarr Prize for his article “From Sublime Landscapes to ‘White Gold’: How Skiing Transformed the Alps after 1930,” Environmental History 19 (January 2014): 78-108.

The Tarr Prize recognizes the best article published in a journal or edited collection on the relationship between technology and environment in history during the previous 18 months. Envirotech would also like to thank our prize committee members—Ann Greene, Steve Cutcliffe, and Ashley Carse—for their service.

Denning’s article examines the material and imaginative transformation of Alpine landscapes in the twentieth century. Writing in an engaging style, he integrates histories of environment, technology, and culture to craft a seamless narrative of landscape change in which the distinctions between these fields and their organizing categories seem superfluous. In so doing, Denning makes a compelling case for the value added by analyzing landscape change through an envirotech lens. After all, as he shows, neither ski slope managers pursuing the goal of snow security—maintaining enough “white gold” on the slopes to attract business—nor visiting tourists saw clear boundaries between nature and technology. New technologies like cable lifts, which moved skiers to existing snow at higher elevations, and snow cannons, which pumped out artificial snow, changed the industry and smoothed out the variability in weather and climate that had plagued their predecessors. In so doing, technologies embedded ski tourism in the physical and economic landscape, while reinforcing a particular vision of Alpine nature.

The major contribution of the article to Envirotech is its extension of the study of the environment-technology nexus to the study of sport and leisure. While we have learned a great deal about how nuclear, chemical, and agricultural interventions have shaped and been shaped by the non-human environment, Denning’s work reminds us that landscapes of leisure—even those that appear natural—are also engineered. Indeed, entire industries have been organized around the creation and maintenance of a natural aesthetic (a snowy mountainside, a palm-covered beach). To that end, the article draws on a wide range of theory—from Richard White’s writing on work and nature, to sociologist John Urry’s work on the consumption of place, to philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s ideas about modernity and speed—to explain why and how Alpine landscapes were produced for tourist consumption. By recognizing sports and leisure as phenomena where the environmental and the technical bleed together, Denning opens up a new space for envirotech research.

The Envirotech Special Interest Group is pleased to announce a $400 travel grant for the upcoming 2014 SHOT conference. Eligibility for the award is limited to those presenting a paper addressing the interrelated histories of environment and technology at the upcoming SHOT meeting in Dearborn, MI November 6-9 2014. The grant is available to current graduate students, recent Ph.D.s (earned within three years) and independent scholars. The application is due by Friday, September 19, 2014. The winner will receive a check for $400 at the Envirotech breakfast meeting during the conference.

Applicants should complete this formTravel_Grant_App_SHOT2014, and email it along with a one or two page C.V. to TravelGrant@envirotechhistory.org. Any questions should be addressed to Chair, Envirotech Travel Grant, and submitted by email to TravelGrant@envirotechhistory.org.

Envirotech, a special interest group within the Society for the History of Technology and the American Society for Environmental History, invites nominations for the 2014 Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Article Prize. The Tarr Prize recognizes the best article published in either a journal or article collection on the relationship between technology and the environment in history. The prize committee is particularly interested in publications that show how studying the intersections of environment and technology can lead to new insights into historical topics. Articles originally published in any language are welcome, but applicants must provide a translation of non-English articles. To be eligible for the 2014 prize, the article must be published between November 1, 2012, and June 15, 2014.

The Tarr Prize carries a cash award of $350 and will be conferred at the Society for the History of Technology conference in Dearborn, Michigan, October 7-11, 2014.

Send one copy of your article and a brief curriculum vitae (one page Word or PDF files only please) to tarrprize2014@gmail.com to be considered. The deadline for submissions is August 1, 2014. Winners will be announced in early September.

Envirotech is pleased to announce that L. Ruth Rand, a graduate student in the University of Pennsylvania’s Program in the History and Sociology of Society, is the winner of the Envirotech Travel Grant for travel to the March ASEH conference in San Francisco.

At the conference, Rand will present in the session “What Is a Disaster? A Roundtable on Risk and Disaster Research in Environmental History” where she will offer her perspective as an environmental historian of outer space and present on her research about Near-Earth space debris and the political and technological implications of declaring Near-Earth outer space a site of environmental disaster.

Many thanks to envirotech’s travel grant committee: Leslie Tomory, Maurits Ertsen, and Eve Buckley.