American Studies Program

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Conference

Social Conflict and Environmental Change in Comparative and Historical Perspective.”

A Northeast Regional Conference

Yale University, Saturday, April 17, 2010

New Haven, Connecticut

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Social conflicts over natural resources shape the abilities of communities and nations to access water, energy, food, and other critical needs. These struggles to control and manage resources – as well as ideas about these resources – have profound implications not only for ecological integrity but also for social justice and equity. Environmental history scholarship has played a leading role in exploring the origins and unfolding of such struggles, whether between governments and indigenous peoples, corporations and communities, scientists and the public, or different ethnic groups.

Environmental History at Yale invites scholars, faculty, and graduate students to attend a one-day conference featuring innovative environmental history scholarship by doctoral students from eight northeastern universities. 

Three moderated panel sessions will explore our conference theme: "Social Conflict and Environmental Change in Comparative and Historical Perspective." Our first session will explore political conflicts surrounding technology and expertise in natural resource development.  Our second session will examine border landscapes and social conflict.  Our third panel will consider problems and issues associated with the extraction and exploitation of biological resources.  Professor Donald Worster of the University of Kansas also will deliver a lunchtime address.  A faculty panel featuring Karl Jacoby (Brown), Harriet Ritvo (MIT), and Emmanuel Kreike (Princeton) will conclude the day.

The conference schedule is now available. Presentations will be approximately 20 minutes, based on papers circulated in advance to panel commentators and attendees.   If you would like to receive more information regarding the conference as it becomes available, please email environmentalhistory@yale.edu.

Co-Sponsors and Supporters:

Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund

Department of History, Yale University

Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders

MacMillan Center at Yale