Living on the Edge:
Human Desires and Environmental Realities

Baton Rouge, LA, 28 FEBRUARY -- 3 MARCH, 2007

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: 1 JULY 2006

***** New Info: Please note that on Feb. 28, 2007, 100 conference registrants will participate in a "rolling seminar" to New Orleans; this seminar is open on a first come, first served, basis once registration is open. ******

The program committee for the American Society for Environmental History invites panel, paper, and poster proposals for its March 2007 meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Proposals may address any area of environmental history, but in keeping with the conference’s theme, the committee specifically solicits submissions examining perceptions of risk and social responses to environmental disasters and the idea of living on the edge: edges of danger, edges of continents, edges of poverty, and the space between history and other disciplines. After the enormous destruction along the Gulf Coast resulting from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, it seems all the more essential to consider the deep complexities of dealing with environmental hazards, and the varying roles of science, government, politics, and community.

The committee supports approaches ranging from the transnational to the personal, from policy to politics, and we encourage proposals by anthropologists, ecologists, economists, geographers, and sociologists. Panels that integrate disparate geographic areas or disciplinary approaches will be particularly favored. By seeking interdisciplinary conversations about environmental disasters and their implications, we hope to cast new light on this subject. However, the committee strongly recommends proposals for complete panels. Individual papers are welcome, but they are more difficult to accommodate. To maximize the number of papers yet maintain opportunities for creative exchanges among panelists and the audience, the committee also requests that panel proposals be limited either to three papers and a discussant or four papers and no comment. Participants are limited to presenting only one formal paper, but they may also engage in roundtable, chairing, or commenting duties.

To submit a proposal, go to http://www.aseh.net, click on the link for the Baton Rouge 2007 conference, and type or paste in the standard information.

Should you have questions, please contact any member of the program committee:
David Louter, Chair, National Park Service (David_Louter@nps.gov)
Betsy Mendelsohn, University of Maryland (bmendel@umd.edu)
Craig Colton, Louisiana State University (ccolten@lsu.edu)
Laura Watt, EDAW Inc. (lawatt@california.com)

Mission statement: The American Society for Environmental History (ASEH), founded in 1977, seeks to promote scholarship and teaching in environmental history, to support the professional needs of its members, and to connect its undertakings with larger communities. The ASEH aspires to advance a greater understanding of the history of human interaction with the rest of the natural world, to foster dialogue between humanistic scholarship, environmental science, and other disciplines, and to support global environmental history efforts that benefit the public as well as the general scholarly community. It promotes these activities through publication of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental History, annual conferences, scholarly awards, on-line discussions, conversation with other professional societies, and public outreach.