International Commission on the History of MeteorologyClimate change discourse is not, and perhaps never was, “owned” by the climatological science community. Given the recent and heated “climate wars,” it is fruitful to examine the status anxiety in this field from historical and science studies perspectives.
The symposium addresses “knowledge at work” through case studies of knowledge-making, loss and regaining of knowledge-use, and dissent and authority in climate science and, by comparison, in other discourse communities.
October 12-19, 2013
La Foret Conference and Retreat Center (Colorado)
http://disccrs.org/disccrsposter.pdf
Application Deadline: February 28, 2013
Participation limited to 30 early-career Ph.D. scholars
Airfare and on-site expenses are supported through grants from NSF and NASA
The DISsertations initiative for the advancement of Climate Change ReSearch (DISCCRS, pronounced discourse) hosts symposia for early-career climate change researchers. Our goal is to catalyze international, interdisciplinary collegial networks and foster collaborative interdisciplinary research and dynamic interactions between science and society to enable us to better understand and respond to the myriad challenges posed by climate change.
University of Minnesota, April 5-7 2013
Critical climate change scholarship has demonstrated how the prospect of non-linear, catastrophic change in the conditions of human life demands new modes of critical engagement, and new forms of alignment between social and cultural theory, the earth and life sciences, and political practice (Cohen and Colebrook 2012; Szerszynski and Urry 2010)[1]. This work includes analyses of the political economy of the carbon trade (Bumpus and Liverman 2008; Thorne and Randalls 2007)[2]; the political implications of uncertainty and catastrophe in imagining climate futures (Clark 2010; Gabrys and Yusoff 2011; Hulme and Dessai 2008; Swyngedouw 2010; Zizek 2010); and the intersection of economic and ecological crisis in contemporary forms of power (Cooper 2010; Dibley and Neilson 2010; Massumi 2009). This workshop aims to contribute to these efforts and provoke new inquiries by posing the question: what is critical about critical climate change scholarship? Employing the dual implications of this phrase, we ask both how climate change demands a rethinking of the nature of critique, and how critical scholarship is more necessary than ever for efforts toward just and sustainable ecological futures.
An election of officers for the International Commission on History of Meteorology (ICHM) will be held this summer with the results to be announced before the international congress in Manchseter 2013. Terms of office will be January 1, 2014 through Dec. 31, 2017.
Please send nominations and self-nominations for President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary/Webmaster to the chair of the nominating committee, Cornelia Lüdecke, C.Luedecke@lrz.uni-muenchen.de with a deadline of November 30, 2012.
The current bylaws are posted at http://www.meteohistory.org/bylaws.html
With best wishes
Cornelia Lüdecke
ICHM Past President
Syracuse University Press just published Lake Effect: Tales of Warm Lakes, Arctic Winds, and Recurrent Snows, by Mark Monmonier. For more information, please visit http://
Monmonier is author of Air Apparent, a history of the development and use of weather maps. His new book includes a historical examination of the recognition and understanding of a regionally important meteorological phenomenon.
Appel à contribution
La brume et le brouillard dans la littérature et les arts.
Une esthétique de l’indistinction
dir. Karin Becker et Olivier Leplatre
The New Scholars group of NiCHE (Network in Canadian History and Environment) would like to invite submissions for the 3rd annual Place and Placelessness Online Workshop, taking place October 18-19, 2012.
Visit the workshop website for full details at http://virtualeh.wordpress.
This online symposium is intended for graduate students and recently graduated scholars from all disciplines that seek to better understand the complex relationships between nature and culture, with particular attention paid to the theme of climate. The workshop attempts to replicate the collegiate atmosphere of a shared-space meeting by using a variety of internet tools, including WordPress, Skype, Google Maps, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter to share ideas and participate in engaged discussion. This model should appeal especially to those who are eager for academic gatherings without the cost or carbon footprint of in-person meetings. The workshop encourages participation from students across the humanities, social sciences and physical sciences in an attempt to facilitate trans-disciplinary and transnational dialogue for global issues such as anthropogenic climate change.
Scientific Communication and its History – III
Climate and Weather: Science as Public Culture
Conference at the Maison Française d’Oxford
7 – 9 January 2013
Call for Papers
This is the third conference in a series devoted to historical and contemporary perspectives on the communication of science and technology.
Climate and weather provide a particularly rich and challenging case study to complete the conference series. The climate sciences are characterized by complexity: in their professional networks; their conceptual models; and the logistics of their large-scale data and computing needs. Yet few modern scientific disciplines attract the same level of public engagement, in both everyday life and passionate debate on the future of the planet. Moreover, their status at the intersection of policy, scientific controversy and the public sphere is not a recent development: the same issues and fault lines ran through meteorology from the 18th-century onwards.
Cornelia Lüdecke and Colin Summerhayes recently published a new book, The Third Reich in Antarctica: The Story of the Third German Antarctic Expedition 1938-39 (Erskine Press, 2012). For more info, please visit the publisher’s website.
2012-2013 American Geophysical Union
Graduate Fellowship in the History of Science
Deadline: 15 August 2012
The American Geophysical Union invites applications for a $5000 fellowship in the history of
science to a doctoral student completing a dissertation in the history of the geophysical sciences,
which include topics related to atmospheric sciences, biogeosciences, geodesy, geomagnetism
and paleomagnetism, hydrology, ocean sciences, planetary sciences, seismology, space physics,
aeronomy, tectonophysics, volocanology, geochemistry, and petrology. The fellowship must be
used during the year following the start of the 2012 fall semester/quarter.
The goal of the fellowship is to assist doctoral students in the history of the geophysical sciences
with the costs of travel to obtain archival/research materials needed to complete the dissertation.