Canadian Environmental History at ASEH 2024

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From April 3-7 the American Society for Environmental History will hold its annual meeting in Denver. This year there will also be a Virtual ASEH Conference from March 26-30. 

For your convenience, we present a round-up of all the Canadian content, as well as content being presented by scholars based in Canada, being presented at both the virtual and in-person ASEH. If we have missed your presentation, panel, or roundtable, please leave us a comment or send a message and we will make sure to add you to the list.

VIRTUAL ASEH CONFERENCE – ONLINE (MARCH 26-30)

THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2024

Online Lightning Talks
3:00-4:30pm (EST)

Climate Anomalies, Floods, and their Challenges in the East African Great Lakes, past to present from the 19th to the 21st Century
George Colpitts, University of Calgary
Andrew Goodwin, University of Calgary

Captives From Canada’s “Unspoiled Province;” Extracting Wild Animals For Sportsmen’s Shows, 1898-1941
Sean Cox, University of New Brunswick

ASEH CONFERENCE – DENVER (April 3-7)

THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2024

Plumbing the Depths: Towards a Deeper Understanding of Groundwater
8:30 to 10:00am, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Blake10:00am, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Blake

Sinai Aquifer: Politics, scales and poetics
Alaa Attiah, University of Toronto

Extractivism, Environments, and Encounters: Legacies of interaction and relationship
8:30 to 10:00am, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Confluence B

Borderlands Environments and Environmentalisms
Ramya Swayamprakash, Grand Valley State University

Landscape construction in the modern history of Chile and Latin America: Approaches from animal domestication, technology, and infrastructure
8:30 to 10:00am, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level 

Making Predictable Rivers: Experts, Droughts, and Floods in 20th Century Chile
Peter de Montmollin, University of British Columbia

Environmental Art History and Visual Culture
10:30am to 12:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Blake

Roundtable Presenters: Nyssa Komorowski, University of Toronto; Isabelle Gapp, University of Aberdeen

Racial Capitalism, Scientific Infrastructure and the North American Mineralogical Frontier, 1850-1920
10:30am to 12:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Confluence B

“Men Who Love a Fight with Nature”: Mining Engineers and the Necropolitics of Mine Waste in California and South Africa, 1870-1910
Douglas Jones, York University

The Geochemistry of Race: Copper-Working and Theories of Racial Difference in Colonial Canada, 1850-1870
Sajdeep Soomal, University of Toronto

Commodified Underworlds: Geological Survey of Canada’s Mineral Sets
Emelie Desrochers-Turgeon, Dalhousie University

Innovation, Creation, and Technologies of Change in the 20th Century
1:30 to 3:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Gilpin

Planting Socialism: Seed Breeding and Biodiversity Loss in Maoist China
Mengran Xu, University of Toronto

Sugar, Water, and Electricity: New Origin Stories for Today’s Climate Crisis
3:30 to 5:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Blake

Consuming Power Under Socialism: Electrification and the Changing of People’s Workspace and Patterns of Life in Rural North China, 1950-1983
Hongyun Lyu, University of Toronto

Applied Environmental Histories of Global Parks and Protected Areas
3:30 to 5:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Curtis

Roundtable Participant: Steve Chignell, University of British Columbia

Commodity Extraction across Transimperial Spaces
3:30 to 5:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Gilpin

Bauxite, Bonded Labor, and American Capitalists in Suriname
Jordan Howell, University of Manitoba

Animal Histories and US Environments in Crisis: A Roundtable
3:30 to 5:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Lobby Level, Horace Tabor

Roundtable Presenter: Jessica Wang, University of British Columbia
Moderator: Susan Nance, University of Guelph

Extracting and Commodifying Aquatic Resources
April 4, 3:30 to 5:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Welton

Water as Material/Semiotic Resource in the Anthropocene: Nuclear After-Lives of the Narmada River Protests
Kumar Sundaram Pathak, Concordia University

FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2024

Animal Encounters in the Archive
8:30 to 10:00am, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Lobby Level, Horace Tabor

Roundtable Participants: Caroline Abbott, Heather Green, Sean Cox, Isabelle Gapp

Extractive Economies from the Industrial Revolution to the Anthropocene
8:30 to 10:00am, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Larimer

Climate Change and the Industrial Revolution
Vladimir D. Diaz-Cuellar, Carleton University

A World Shaped By Fungi and Plastic: Histories and Presents of Extraction, Promise, and Anthropocentric Utilitarianism
Morgaine Lee, Simon Fraser University

What Do We Get Out of it? Extractivism in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 1759-1856
10:30am to 12:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Blake

Commercial Enterprises, Extractivism, and Contested Space in the Gulf of St. Lawrence Region
Glenn Iceton, Mount Allison University

Masters of the Gulf: Admiralty Understandings of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, circa 1759-1815
Erin Spinney, University of New Brunswick (Saint John)

Expressions of Extraction in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence: Environmental Knowledge, and Henry W. Bayfield, 1827-1856
Zachary Tingley, University of New Brunswick
Joshua MacFadyen, University of Prince Edward Island

The Far Off Omineca and Beyond: Reconsidering the Finlay-Parsnip Watershed of Northern British Columbia, 1860-1956
10:30am to 12:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Larimer

What Does It Mean to be Tsek’ehne: The Story of a Nation
Daniel Sims, University of British Columbia/NCCIH

Failure on the Frontier: An Exploration of Settler-Colonial Failure on Tsek’ehne Lands
Charles Campbell, Florida State University

A Drowned Forest: Hydrocolonialism and the Destruction of the Tsek’ehne Mixed Economy in Northern British Columbia, Canada
Tyler McCreary, Florida State University

Flooded routes: Traditional Tsek’ehne movement along the Finlay-Parsnip watershed and the impacts of the Williston Lake Reservoir
Helena Safron, Florida State University

SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 2024

Sedimentary Speculation: Valuing Dust, Mud, Sand, and Stone
8:30 to 10:00am, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Curtis

Dust for Sale: Infrastructural Residues and the Voluminous Geographies of the Alaska Highway
Desiree Valadares, University of British Columbia

Environmental History as a Platform for Public Outreach: Part 1
8:30 to 10:00am, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Lawrence A

Roundtable Presenter: Finis Dunaway, Trent University

Nourishing Extraction, Environing Bodies: Corporeal Histories of Food, Empire, and Environment
8:30 to 10:00am, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Lawrence B

Mountain Empire, Imperial Diets, Indigenous Bodies
Jo Sharma, University of Toronto

Environmental Histories of Risk and Speculation
8:30 to 10:00am, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, McCourt

Canola Capitalism: Futures Markets and Genetically-Modified Rapeseed on the Canadian Prairie, 1963-2007
Tim Paulson, University of British Columbia

In the Swamps and the Fields, in the Toilets and the Churches: Where Environmental and Religious Histories Meet
10:30am to 12:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Confluence B

Drain the Swamp, Redeem the Land: the Religious Ecologies of Drainage in the Florida Everglades
Isaiah Ellis, University of Toronto

Shaping Cities, Shaping Knowledge
10:30am to 12:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Larimer

Landscape, Settlement, and Extractive Entanglements in 20th Century British Columbia
Sara Jacobs, University of British Columbia

Environmental History as a Platform for Public Outreach: Part 2
10:30am to 12:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Lawrence A

Roundtable Presenter: Caleb Wellum, University of Toronto, Mississauga

Changing, Evolving, Engineered Landscapes
3:30 to 5:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, Blake

Messaging the Chemical: Extracting Food from the Soil in English Canada, 1950-2000
Royden Loewen, University of Winnipeg

Science, Extraction, and Extreme Environments: Pasts, Presents, and Futures
3:30 to 5:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Mezzanine Level, McCourt

Roundtable Presenter: Blair Stein, Clarkson University

Experiential Learning in Environmental History: Diversity from Margin to Center
3:30 to 5:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Lobby Level, Molly Brown

Akiikaa: Land-Based Learning and Indigenous Health
Angela Mashford-Pringle, University of Toronto

Feature Image: Last Chance and Amethyst Mines, Creede, Colo. Denver Public Library.
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Daniel Macfarlane

Daniel is an Associate Professor in the School of the Environment, Geography, and Sustainability at Western Michigan University. He is an editor for The Otter-La loutre and is part of the NiCHE executive. A transnational environmental historian who focuses on Canadian-American border waters and energy issues, particularly in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin, Daniel is the author or co-editor of five books on topics such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, border waters, IJC, and Niagara Falls. His book "Natural Allies: Environment, Energy, and the History of US-Canada Relations" was published in summer 2023. His newest book, an environmental history of Lake Ontario, will be released in 2024. Website: https://danielmacfarlane.wordpress.com Twitter: @Danny__Mac__

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