call for papers - Chicago conference
Winds of Change: Global Connections across Space, Time, and Nature
Introduction: The ASEH invites proposals for its 2017 annual conference, which will convene March 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. Located along the shores of Lake Michigan and the banks of the Chicago River, this gateway city linked eastern markets, western hinterlands, and commodified nature. Between 1830 and 1870, the development of ship harbors and railroads, the construction of grain elevators, stockyards, and meat packing companies, and the creation of the Chicago Board of Trade transformed a frontier outpost into the nation’s preeminent commodities marketplace. Even the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 proved transformative. Following the fire, innovations in skyscraper construction and the emergence of the Prairie School of architectural and landscape design made Chicago one of the nation’s premier built environments. Chicago celebrated its rise from the ashes with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which introduced the City Beautiful Movement to urban planning. The city also engendered a nascent environmental justice movement, when Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr established Hull House, where female reformers, such as Dr. Alice Hamilton, conducted some of the earliest studies documenting the disproportionate public health threats borne by immigrant neighborhoods. And it is home to President Barack Obama, who has endeavored to address global climate change and its threats to the environment and world political stability. Chicago thus evokes many of the interdisciplinary themes of environmental history, including increasing globalization, with all of its implications for the natural world.
