by Gwendolyn Lockman Past the local dump and the interstate, and separated by foothills from the nearby historic neighborhoods of Missoula, Montana, the Moon-Randolph Homestead can be found, steeling itself against the modern world but not quite stuck in the past. It is an unusual historical site where the ecological and the human, and the […]
Slavery in Early Austin: The Stringer’s Hotel and Urban Slavery
by Clifton Sorrell III On the eve of the Civil War, an advertisement appeared in the Texas Almanac announcing the sale of five enslaved people at the Stringer’s Hotel. “Negroes For Sale––I will offer for sale, in the city of Austin, before the Stringer’s Hotel, on the 1st day of January next, to the highest […]
IHS Talk: “Climate and Soil: An Environmental History of the Maya” by Timothy Beach, University of Texas (Reclaiming the Pre-Modern Past)
The Late Holocene history of the ancient Maya world provides a microcosm of the Early Anthropocene. Much of the region today is tropical forest or recently deforested, but from 3,000 to 400 years ago Maya cities, farms, roads, reservoirs, and fields altered most of this region. Although a literate society, the written record provides little […]
The Anthropocene and Environmental History
By Jesse Ritner If you open a textbook on geology and flip through to the chapter on geological time it will tell you we are currently living in the epoch of the Holocene. The Holocene started approximately 10,000 years before present with the end of the last ice age. However, research by a diverse array […]
Episode 118: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity
Host: Christopher Rose, Department of History Guest: Megan Raby, Department of History Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, ecologists took advantage of […]
The Empire of the Dandelion: Environmental History in Al Crosby’s Footsteps
By Megan Raby This essay is adapted from Dr. Raby’s remarks at a symposium to honor Al Crosby that was sponsored by the Institute for Historical Studies at UT Austin on February 4, 2019. Alfred Crosby’s work has been with me for a long time––actually longer than I can remember. I routinely assign Ecological Imperialism […]
The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us by Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (2015)
By Marisol Bayona Roman Though the authors of The Shock of the Anthropocene apply their skills as historians of science throughout, the book is far more than a straightforward history. Written at the intersection of science, history, and the broader humanities, Bonneuil and Fressoz provide well-reasoned and well-founded arguments that surgically take apart the dominant view […]
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott (2017)
By Steven Richter Beginning with the title and continuing through the final pages, James C. Scott’s Against the Grain seeks to subvert the historical narrative of inevitable progress toward civilization that has been dominant for millennia. Instead of framing agriculture as a driver of enlightened civilization, he conceives of it as a social and ecological […]
Sowing the Seeds of Communism: Corn Wars in the USA
Today we often associate hybrid or genetically modified corn with agricultural monopolies, big business, and capitalism, in the early Cold War some feared that the rise of hybrid corn would sow the seeds of Communism in the United States.
Student Showcase – Oil and Gas Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
Maham Sewani and Sania Shahid Sartartia Middle School Junior Division Group Website Read Maham and Sania’s Process Paper In 2010 the Deepwater Horizon, an off-shore oil rig operated by British Petroleum, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the succeeding weeks an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, the largest marine […]