The Rachel Carson Center for Environmental Studies is a joint initiative of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and the Deutsches Museum. Generously supported by the German Ministry for Research and Education, the Rachel Carson Center’s goal is to further research and discussion in the field of international environmental studies and to strengthen the role of the humanities in the current political and scientific debates about the environment. Special emphasis will be placed on international, comparative and historical perspectives. The Center is designed to bring together leading academics from all over the world who work on the complex relationship between nature and culture across disciplines. Individual projects will focus on different time periods and different geographic areas. The Center is named after the worldwide recognized American scientist and nature writer Rachel Carson. It is conceived as an international think tank that will discuss and analyze the role of human actors and the role of nature in this relationship. The Center’s working language is English.

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We are looking for two persons with a doctoral degree or the equivalent who present research plans with a high degree of relevance for the appointments. The place of work for the appointments will be the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies.

The appointees’ research programmes must be clearly linked to the research area of science, technology and environment studies, i.e. culture studies research on science, technology and the environment, relations between these areas and society as a whole. (www8.umu.se/humfak/forskning/vtm.html). One of the appointments is directed mainly towards science and technology (dnr 312-138-09); the other mainly towards the environment (dnr 312-139-09). Continue reading →

This is the annual call for submissions for SHOT’s IEEE Life Member’s Prize in Electrical History.

If you or someone you know has published a deserving article in 2008 dealing with any aspect of the history of electricity, electronics, telecommunications, or any other electrically-related field — please consider nominating it for the IEEE Prize. Continue reading →

Fulbright chair in Denmark 2010-2011

Distinguished Fulbright chair in US Environmental History / AMERICAN STUDIES

Grant Activity: The grantee would be asked to teach one 4 hour course at the MA level each term, plus one BA level course in the fall term. In the spring term, two hours would be given over to advising of students and to play a central role in organizing a major academic conference. University of Southern Denmark (SDU) will defray the costs of that conference. At the undergraduate level, courses taught are within the fields of American history, literature, and politics, as well as American Studies. At the graduate level, the MA degree in American Studies has a mix of electives and required seminars. The teaching load is 6 hours per week each term. The format is a mix of seminars, lectures, discussions, presentations and oral reports. The average course size varies according to level: graduate courses usually have 15-25 students, and undergraduate level classes have a maximum of 35 students. Students purchase their own books, which may be supplemented by materials placed on the intranet program “Blackboard.” Continue reading →

International Congress of History of Science and Technology
Budapest, Hungary, July 28-August 2, 2009.

Conveners:
Cornelia Luedecke: C.Luedecke@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
James R. Fleming: jfleming@colby.edu

The sky too belongs to the Landscape: —the ocean of air in which we live and move, with its continents and islands of cloud, its tides and currents of constant and variable winds… in which the bolt of heaven is forged, and the fructifying rain condensed… can never be to the zealous Naturalist a subject of tame and unfeeling contemplation — Luke Howard

Looking up, whether casually or with instruments, involves both frameworks and focal points.  To observe the sky, whether clouds, sunsets, portents, or myriad other phenomena, is to visualize it, combining impressions, information, assumptions, and apprehensions.  To represent the observations, whether with the naked eye or mediated, on rock, stained glass, paper, canvas, photographic film, or digitally, involves theory, language, technique, and cultural assumptions. It involves looking at it in a social and historical context.

The scientific gaze has trended toward full automation and abstraction, with data being acquired, analyzed and interpreted often without any direct visual inspection or representation.  This has certainly not been the case historically in religious or aesthetic traditions.  In landscape painting, for example, at least half of the scene is from the horizon up.

The International Commission on History of Meteorology invites historians of science and technology, art historians, artists, filmmakers, meteorologists, and other interested scholars to examine and explore the visual languages, cultural meanings, and representations of the sky—especially its weather and climate-related phenomena—in all its transient and transcendent glory.

Registration deadlines are announced on the Congress website: http://www.conferences.hu/ichs09/

Please email proposed paper title, 250 word abstract, and short bio to either of the symposium conveners before Dec. 15th.

A conference on the history of climate change is being held at Colby College, Waterville, Maine, 1-4 April 2009.  This conference, titled  “Climate and Cultural Anxiety: Historical Perspectives,” will be international in scope, interdisciplinary in nature, and intergenerational in its inclusion of both graduate and undergraduate students.  Continue reading →

Just a small, technical note: We are moving the envirotech email discussion list over from Stanford’s servers to our own today. All subscribers should have received an email asking for confirmation of this move. I also sent out a reminder to the old mailing list. If, despite all these emails, you are a subscriber and have not received any emails, please visit http://envirotechhistory.org/organization-news/the-envirotech-mailing-list/ to sign up manually.

The ICOHTEC Prize is sponsored by the Juanelo Turriano Foundation and consists of 3,000 Euros. ICOHTEC, the International Committee for the History of Technology, is interested in the history of technology studies focusing on the technological development as well as its relationship to science, society, economy, culture and the environment. The history of technology covers all periods of human history and all populated areas. In addition, there is no limitation as to theoretical or methodological approaches. Eligible are original works in any of the official ICOHTEC languages (English, French, German, Russian or Spanish) in the history of technology (published or unpublished Ph. D. theses, monographs  — no articles) written by scholars who, when applying for the prize, are not older than 37 years. For the ICOHTEC Prize 2009, please, send three copies of the work you want to submit and a summary of 4500 words in English to the ICOHTEC Secretary General, Professor Timo Myllyntaus, School of History, Kaivokatu 12, 20 014 University of Turku, Finland, by 31 December 2008.

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