Davis Center Seminar
Environment and Climate

Fridays at 10:15 am - 12:00 pm ET
211 Dickinson

The Shelby Cullom Davis Center Seminars present weekly programming on a variety of topics related to the Center's current theme. Visiting Fellows from academic institutions near and far help to create a rich understanding of the topic from diverse yet overlapping perspectives. The theme for the academic years 2022-23 and 2023-24 is “Environment and Climate."

The papers are pre-circulated and can be accessed one-week prior to the date of the seminar. Email Jennifer Houle (jhoule@princeton.edu) for a copy of the paper. 

if you have access to Princeton University credentials, please access through https://princetonu.sharepoint.com/sites/history/specialprojects/Davis%20...

September 9

Laura Martin, Williams College
The War Against Weeds: How Auxinic Herbicides Reshaped Life on Earth

Commentator: Erika Milam, Princeton University

September 16

Alexandra Hui, Mississippi State University
Listening to Nature: Imagining Past and Future Ecologies at the End of the Holocene

Commentator: Emily Thompson, Princeton University

September 23

John McNeill, Georgetown University
Ingredients of the Industrial Revolution: Elephants, Whales, and Bison, ca. 1820-1900

Commentator: D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University

September 30

Deborah Coen, Yale University
How the Atmosphere Lost its Virtue

Commentator: Angela Creager, Princeton University

October 7

Gabrielle Hecht, Stanford University
Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures

Commentator: Jacob Dlamini, Princeton University

October 14

François Furstenberg, Johns Hopkins University.
American Palimpsest

Commentator: Elizabeth Ellis, Princeton University

October 28

Sarah Cameron, Davis Fellow/University of Maryland
The Aral Sea: Environment, Society, and State Power in Central Asia

Commentator: Asif Siddiqi, Fordham University

November 4

Jo Guldi, Southern Methodist University
The limits and promise of text mining as a historical method: the case of 'environmentalism' in Congress, 1970-2010

Commentator: Lawrence Glickman, Cornell University

November 11

Anne Berg, Davis Fellow / University of Pennsylvania
Empire of Rags and Bones: Waste and War in Nazi Germany

Commentator: Yair Mintzker, Princeton University

November 18

Andrew Needham, Davis Fellow / New York University
Teapot: Scandal and the Remaking of the Domestic Oil Industry

Commentator: Kevin Kruse, Princeton University

December 2

Dagomar Degroot, Georgetown University
Ripples in the Cosmic Ocean: Towards an Environmental History of the Solar System

Commentator: Michael Gordin, Princeton University

December 9

William Cavert, Davis Center Fellow/St. Thomas University
Vermin Eradication and Agrarian Improvement in Early Modern England

Commentator: Jack Bouchard, Rutgers University

February 3

Bathsheba Demuth, Brown University
Giving a Dam: Beavers, Law, and Making the Yukon River

Commentator: Sarah Rivett, Princeton University

February 10

Nicole Barnes, Davis Fellow / Duke University
Waste Cycles: A Social and Ecological History of Toilets in Modern China

Commentator: Janet Chen, Princeton University

February 17

Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University
The Franklin Stove: Forging the Climate in the Little Ice Age

Commentator: Anthony Grafton, Princeton University

February 24

Benjamin Cohen, Davis Fellow / Lafayette College
How Not to Feed the World: Our Century-long Quest to Produce More Food and Where It’s Led Us Astray

Commentator: Keith Wailoo, Princeton University

March 3

Nancy Jacobs, Brown University
Parrots and Plantations: The More-than-Human Early Modern Atlantic and Its Aftermath

Commentator: Robyn d’Avignon, New York University

March 10

Lydia Barnett, Northwestern University
Eco-Prospecting in Italy's Little Ice Age

Commentator: David Bell, Princeton University

March 24

Reinaldo Funes-Monzote, Davis Fellow / University of Havana
From Slavery Plantations to Mass Tourism: Caribbean Environmental History and the Challenges of Climate Change

Commentator: Stuart Schwartz, Yale University

March 31

David Singerman, University of Virginia
The Purity Machine

Commentator: Julie Greene, University of Maryland

April 7

Rosie Bsheer, Davis Fellow / Harvard University
A Return to Land: Private Property, Corporatization, and Agro-Imperialism in Saudi Arabia

Commentator: Bernard Haykel, Princeton University

April 14

Albert Park, Claremont McKenna College
Noticing Nature in Colonial Korea: Integrative Mapping and Energy Extraction through Agricultural Science

Commentator: Sheldon Garon, Princeton University

April 21

No seminar this week. Stone Lecture Series with Gregg Mitman, April 18, 19, and 20

April 28

José Augusto Padua, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
The Causal Links between Slavery, Deforestation, and Climate Deterioration: Voices from Nineteenth-century Brazil

Commentator: Vera Candiani, Princeton University