eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics, Sep 10, 2021
The Post-Quantal Garden is a work of speculative fiction based on J.G. Ballard’s short story “The... more The Post-Quantal Garden is a work of speculative fiction based on J.G. Ballard’s short story “The Terminal Beach” first published in 1964. Set within Donna Haraway’s climate-changed Chthulucene, the work is intended as an elliptical rumination on the history of nuclear testing in the Pacific, bio-hacking, tropicality, and apocalyptic narrative. Moving between historical fact and speculative fiction, the story takes the form of a scholarly introduction to and contextualization of fictional passages from an imaginary journal supposedly found during the very real radiological clean-up of Enewetak Atoll. Enewetak, an atoll in the Marshall Islands group, was used by the US for nuclear testing and was the site of operation Ivy-Mike, the first fusion bomb test, and is the setting for Ballard’s Terminal Beach.
The explosion of new technologies that emerged from the energy crises of the 1970s produced a num... more The explosion of new technologies that emerged from the energy crises of the 1970s produced a number of forays into new forms of energy generation. This is the story of one project of this era that sought—maybe unconsciously—to invert the standard model, relocating energy production from an inscrutable position at the urban periphery to a highly legible, even participatory position at the urban center. The story of its inception, success, and eventual demise paints a picture of the US’s occasional but often short-lived flirtation with small-scale, zero-carbon renewable energy. Perhaps more importantly, it also offers a provocation for how small-scale, localized energy systems might become situated, legible, and participatory within urban areas.
The paper shows how infrastructural investments around urban agriculture might move the EcoCity t... more The paper shows how infrastructural investments around urban agriculture might move the EcoCity toward a humane food system that honors the important role that food plays in all cultures and that is robust enough to significantly impact the availability of fresh, healthy, local, and affordable food for all. Tags: agriculture_urbain
eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics, 2021
The Post-Quantal Garden is a work of speculative fiction based on J.G. Ballard's short story "The... more The Post-Quantal Garden is a work of speculative fiction based on J.G. Ballard's short story "The Terminal Beach" first published in 1964. Set within Donna Haraway's climate-changed Chthulucene, the work is intended as an elliptical rumination on the history of nuclear testing in the Pacific, biohacking, tropicality, and apocalyptic narrative. Moving between historical fact and speculative fiction, the story takes the form of a scholarly introduction to and contextualization of fictional passages from an imaginary journal supposedly found during the very real radiological clean-up of Enewetak Atoll. Enewetak, an atoll in the Marshall Islands group, was used by the US for nuclear testing and was the site of operation Ivy-Mike, the first fusion bomb test, and is the setting for Ballard's Terminal Beach.
At the turn of the 20th century, US urban reformers and public health advocates understood the pu... more At the turn of the 20th century, US urban reformers and public health advocates understood the public bath and its nascent cousin the public pool as critical infrastructures of public health and social cohesion. Baths helped ensure adequate hygiene and provided respite from the pre-air-conditioned boil of the industrial city. Perhaps more importantly, the shared space of the bath created a fertile environment for social cohesion, fostering a sense of community amongst the many, fractious immigrant communities of the fin-de-siècle US city-this done, sadly, with the notable exception of African Americans who were often excluded from public baths or given separate hours.
The Salt Crystal and the Terrible Garden scripts a nested sequence of creation, celebration, eros... more The Salt Crystal and the Terrible Garden scripts a nested sequence of creation, celebration, erosion and discovery. It does so in order to produce a monument capable of inspiring the social institutions necessary to ensure continued memory, awe and caution concerning the WIPP site. The proposal rests upon the staged production of a 100-foot cubic salt crystal. A series of site structures help to celebrate and narrate the crystal over time, from the active life of the WIPP site to the projected 10,000-year lifespan of the crystal.
Afforestation is the process of making a forest on land that was not previously forested. Most of... more Afforestation is the process of making a forest on land that was not previously forested. Most of Israel – even into the Negev -- is an afforested condition today. The afforestation of Palestine, particularly as carried out by Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael aka the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in the years leading up to statehood, has largely been framed as a secular pursuit – an outgrowth of colonialism associated with environmental reclamation for economic purposes, territorial demarcation, and nationalism. This paper argues that, for American Jews, the process of afforestation was a profoundly religious experience, but a religious experience that was grounded in and shaped by the religio-cultural transfer of American Protestant ideas concerning divine providence and Manifest Destiny. It is through this transfer that the future forests of Israel came to serve as the architecture of a distinctly American Jewish landscape identity.
New Energies: Copenhagen. Edited by Ferry, Robert and Elizabeth Monoian. 122-125. New York: Prestel, 2014. , 2014
As a city and port Copenhagen exists at the threshold between land and water. It is startlingly a... more As a city and port Copenhagen exists at the threshold between land and water. It is startlingly appropriate that the city’s symbol, the Little Mermaid, also exists at that threshold: a creature between worlds, half man half fish, caught between land and sea. Copenhagen’s rich bathing culture partakes of this liminality as well, inviting visitors to shed their daily skins and partake in the delights of a warm public bath, or a bracing swim in the harbor. SunBath is a project that attempts to harness the innate capacity of the Refshaleøen site in order to generate electricity, provide a civic amenity, and to give Copenhagen an enduring symbol of its liminal position, culture and leadership in forging a path toward carbon neutrality.
Urban agriculture is at an impasse. Urban and peri-‐urban farms have struggled to capitalize ext... more Urban agriculture is at an impasse. Urban and peri-‐urban farms have struggled to capitalize extensively on local markets even given the growth of the local food movement and widespread concerns about the quality, health risks and environmental unsustainability attributed to the dominant industrial food system. This paper posits that this has resulted from a lack of infrastructure and investment capital that would allow urban food entrepreneurs entry into stages of the food system beyond production. The author suggests a way forward that acknowledges the many competing voices and desires around urban agriculture while providing a model for infrastructural investment that would foster continued opportunism and entrepreneurship. The author further suggests ways in which various types of infrastructural programs could be networked in order to support urban agriculture in more environmental and economically sustainable ways. The paper shows how infrastructural investments around urban agriculture might move the EcoCity toward a humane food system that honors the important role that food plays in all cultures and that is robust enough to significantly impact the availability of fresh, healthy, local, and affordable food for all. Opportunism – our current state: Growing food in cities seems like a simple proposition. Over the last two decades, urban agriculture has encountered few obstacles in moving small scale food production from a position of illicit occupation of abandoned and interstitial land to one of accepted, legitimized and well supported policy in cities across the globe (Mougeot, 2005) (Redwood, 2009). The startling acceptance of urban food production has been predicated on the simplicity of the arguments on its behalf. Growing food on abandoned or underutilized land within our cities makes sense for two simple reasons: 1) It allows urban residents cheap and easy access to manageable, nearby spaces where healthy, if labor intensive, supplemental food can be grown; 2) It enhances the quality of life for all city residents by converting abandoned or underutilized land to urban farms and gardens at virtually no cost to taxpayers (Kaffer, 2010). Thus, as a purely opportunistic use, urban agriculture has been, by all measures, an incredibly successful movement. Occupation of abandoned lots, retrofitted rooftops, highway right-‐of ways, and other interstitial space within the city by urban farms and gardens is now accepted urban practice (Hodgson, 2011). In the post-‐industrial cities of the world, the Urban Agricultural movement has been further facilitated by the host of books and documentary films released over the past decade which decry the health and environmental costs associated with the dominant industrialized agricultural system, and by a growing movement that seeks to utilize urban agriculture as a way of mitigating central city food deserts and
The Ocean Above Us is an annotated children’s story. The prose poem captures roughly 100 years of... more The Ocean Above Us is an annotated children’s story. The prose poem captures roughly 100 years of future history beginning with the California drought and exploring the series of events that follow in its wake – eventually leading to the creation of the first space elevator. The project is inspired by the confirmation of water ice on the dwarf-planet Ceres – and the potential for that water to aid in human colonization of the solar system. The annotation explores this future history in greater depth, intentionally blurring contemporary and historic thought with future imaginings. While the content of the book is fictional, it is based in historical and contemporary scientific fact and well documented scientific speculation.
Abstract: For earlier generations of Americans the agricultural middle landscape, that which is n... more Abstract: For earlier generations of Americans the agricultural middle landscape, that which is neither wilderness nor civilization, held great meaning. Acting not only as a symbol of American opportunity and potential, but as an acute visual reminder of the egalitarian ideal at the heart of the new nation. Today, as Americans have become increasingly urban and the rural has grown increasingly separate from our daily lives, we are left with a strong disconnect between what was, and remains, a moral and national ideal, and a mostly urban lifestyle and environment. This thesis suggests new ways of engaging the pastoral idiom within an urban setting. Using emerging productive technologies to harness the potential of interstitial urban land, and thereby engaging the urban population visually, intellectually, and materially with their landscape as a productive rather then decorative element. It is my hypothesis that such a change would help to reconnect the urban population with the landscape and the symbolism it once conveyed. The possibility of using urban spaces for material purposes is investigated through case studies which consider emerging land based technologies. Each technology is presented with an introduction and discussion of it properties, benefits and limitations, along with graphic data and information concerning their uses and implementation. I then investigate interstitial highway and rail lands within the context of Columbus, Ohio for their potential to support productive uses. This study was conducted using aerial photography of Franklin County, Ohio and ArcGlS as a means to compile spatial, topographic, maintenance, and soils information concerning each parcel of interstitial land. In total, this study revealed over six thousand acres of usable land within highway and rail related landscapes. Site design applications are given with the intent of broader applicability. Findings suggest that these highly visible landscapes have the potential to support a small but significant portion of the local consumption of fuel, electricity, and water. More importantly, this thesis offers up the potential of a new paradigm for the working landscape, one that looks beyond traditional agricultural, industrial, or representational aims to identify the 21st century's middle landscape. In so doing it postulates a way for a new generation of Americans to re-engage the pastoral as a nationalistic symbol without resorting to the chauvinistic impulse associated with prior nationalistic movements.
Society of Architectural Historians
2018 Annual Conference Session
Climatic Landscapes Call for ... more Society of Architectural Historians 2018 Annual Conference Session Climatic Landscapes Call for Papers
At least since Hippocrates first introduced humoral theory to the corpus of western medicine in the 5 th century BC, western society has speculated on the capacity for humans to both shape and to be shaped by climate. Consequently, until the early 20 th century a significant portion of western medical texts contained advice on urban and landscape design aimed at the modification of climate (temperature, exposure, humidity, precipitation) for the protection and preservation of European health and well-being. Geographers like Denis Cosgrove and Clarence Glacken have documented the important role that this fundamentally social conception of climate played in shaping the imaginative worldview that European colonial powers carried with them across the globe. But historians have documented very little about the specific landscapes or landscape rhetoric that result from this entanglement of ecological systems and human desires, let alone the methods and technologies complicit in shaping them. This session seeks to explore the relationship between landscape and the modification of climate by asking several interrelated questions: Can we understand the historical alteration of landscapes globally through the lens of climate? In what ways do past conceptions of climate lead to specific landscape adaptations? How do techno-social expectations, fears or desires around particular climates lead to varying attempts to alter them? What do historical conceptions of climate reveal about contemporary reactions to climate change? Papers should focus on real, non-metaphorical, attempts to alter climate. The session is open to studies of this topic in both western and non-western contexts. Case studies documenting the discourse around specific designed or vernacular landscapes are especially welcome as paper topics.
eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics, Sep 10, 2021
The Post-Quantal Garden is a work of speculative fiction based on J.G. Ballard’s short story “The... more The Post-Quantal Garden is a work of speculative fiction based on J.G. Ballard’s short story “The Terminal Beach” first published in 1964. Set within Donna Haraway’s climate-changed Chthulucene, the work is intended as an elliptical rumination on the history of nuclear testing in the Pacific, bio-hacking, tropicality, and apocalyptic narrative. Moving between historical fact and speculative fiction, the story takes the form of a scholarly introduction to and contextualization of fictional passages from an imaginary journal supposedly found during the very real radiological clean-up of Enewetak Atoll. Enewetak, an atoll in the Marshall Islands group, was used by the US for nuclear testing and was the site of operation Ivy-Mike, the first fusion bomb test, and is the setting for Ballard’s Terminal Beach.
The explosion of new technologies that emerged from the energy crises of the 1970s produced a num... more The explosion of new technologies that emerged from the energy crises of the 1970s produced a number of forays into new forms of energy generation. This is the story of one project of this era that sought—maybe unconsciously—to invert the standard model, relocating energy production from an inscrutable position at the urban periphery to a highly legible, even participatory position at the urban center. The story of its inception, success, and eventual demise paints a picture of the US’s occasional but often short-lived flirtation with small-scale, zero-carbon renewable energy. Perhaps more importantly, it also offers a provocation for how small-scale, localized energy systems might become situated, legible, and participatory within urban areas.
The paper shows how infrastructural investments around urban agriculture might move the EcoCity t... more The paper shows how infrastructural investments around urban agriculture might move the EcoCity toward a humane food system that honors the important role that food plays in all cultures and that is robust enough to significantly impact the availability of fresh, healthy, local, and affordable food for all. Tags: agriculture_urbain
eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics, 2021
The Post-Quantal Garden is a work of speculative fiction based on J.G. Ballard's short story "The... more The Post-Quantal Garden is a work of speculative fiction based on J.G. Ballard's short story "The Terminal Beach" first published in 1964. Set within Donna Haraway's climate-changed Chthulucene, the work is intended as an elliptical rumination on the history of nuclear testing in the Pacific, biohacking, tropicality, and apocalyptic narrative. Moving between historical fact and speculative fiction, the story takes the form of a scholarly introduction to and contextualization of fictional passages from an imaginary journal supposedly found during the very real radiological clean-up of Enewetak Atoll. Enewetak, an atoll in the Marshall Islands group, was used by the US for nuclear testing and was the site of operation Ivy-Mike, the first fusion bomb test, and is the setting for Ballard's Terminal Beach.
At the turn of the 20th century, US urban reformers and public health advocates understood the pu... more At the turn of the 20th century, US urban reformers and public health advocates understood the public bath and its nascent cousin the public pool as critical infrastructures of public health and social cohesion. Baths helped ensure adequate hygiene and provided respite from the pre-air-conditioned boil of the industrial city. Perhaps more importantly, the shared space of the bath created a fertile environment for social cohesion, fostering a sense of community amongst the many, fractious immigrant communities of the fin-de-siècle US city-this done, sadly, with the notable exception of African Americans who were often excluded from public baths or given separate hours.
The Salt Crystal and the Terrible Garden scripts a nested sequence of creation, celebration, eros... more The Salt Crystal and the Terrible Garden scripts a nested sequence of creation, celebration, erosion and discovery. It does so in order to produce a monument capable of inspiring the social institutions necessary to ensure continued memory, awe and caution concerning the WIPP site. The proposal rests upon the staged production of a 100-foot cubic salt crystal. A series of site structures help to celebrate and narrate the crystal over time, from the active life of the WIPP site to the projected 10,000-year lifespan of the crystal.
Afforestation is the process of making a forest on land that was not previously forested. Most of... more Afforestation is the process of making a forest on land that was not previously forested. Most of Israel – even into the Negev -- is an afforested condition today. The afforestation of Palestine, particularly as carried out by Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael aka the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in the years leading up to statehood, has largely been framed as a secular pursuit – an outgrowth of colonialism associated with environmental reclamation for economic purposes, territorial demarcation, and nationalism. This paper argues that, for American Jews, the process of afforestation was a profoundly religious experience, but a religious experience that was grounded in and shaped by the religio-cultural transfer of American Protestant ideas concerning divine providence and Manifest Destiny. It is through this transfer that the future forests of Israel came to serve as the architecture of a distinctly American Jewish landscape identity.
New Energies: Copenhagen. Edited by Ferry, Robert and Elizabeth Monoian. 122-125. New York: Prestel, 2014. , 2014
As a city and port Copenhagen exists at the threshold between land and water. It is startlingly a... more As a city and port Copenhagen exists at the threshold between land and water. It is startlingly appropriate that the city’s symbol, the Little Mermaid, also exists at that threshold: a creature between worlds, half man half fish, caught between land and sea. Copenhagen’s rich bathing culture partakes of this liminality as well, inviting visitors to shed their daily skins and partake in the delights of a warm public bath, or a bracing swim in the harbor. SunBath is a project that attempts to harness the innate capacity of the Refshaleøen site in order to generate electricity, provide a civic amenity, and to give Copenhagen an enduring symbol of its liminal position, culture and leadership in forging a path toward carbon neutrality.
Urban agriculture is at an impasse. Urban and peri-‐urban farms have struggled to capitalize ext... more Urban agriculture is at an impasse. Urban and peri-‐urban farms have struggled to capitalize extensively on local markets even given the growth of the local food movement and widespread concerns about the quality, health risks and environmental unsustainability attributed to the dominant industrial food system. This paper posits that this has resulted from a lack of infrastructure and investment capital that would allow urban food entrepreneurs entry into stages of the food system beyond production. The author suggests a way forward that acknowledges the many competing voices and desires around urban agriculture while providing a model for infrastructural investment that would foster continued opportunism and entrepreneurship. The author further suggests ways in which various types of infrastructural programs could be networked in order to support urban agriculture in more environmental and economically sustainable ways. The paper shows how infrastructural investments around urban agriculture might move the EcoCity toward a humane food system that honors the important role that food plays in all cultures and that is robust enough to significantly impact the availability of fresh, healthy, local, and affordable food for all. Opportunism – our current state: Growing food in cities seems like a simple proposition. Over the last two decades, urban agriculture has encountered few obstacles in moving small scale food production from a position of illicit occupation of abandoned and interstitial land to one of accepted, legitimized and well supported policy in cities across the globe (Mougeot, 2005) (Redwood, 2009). The startling acceptance of urban food production has been predicated on the simplicity of the arguments on its behalf. Growing food on abandoned or underutilized land within our cities makes sense for two simple reasons: 1) It allows urban residents cheap and easy access to manageable, nearby spaces where healthy, if labor intensive, supplemental food can be grown; 2) It enhances the quality of life for all city residents by converting abandoned or underutilized land to urban farms and gardens at virtually no cost to taxpayers (Kaffer, 2010). Thus, as a purely opportunistic use, urban agriculture has been, by all measures, an incredibly successful movement. Occupation of abandoned lots, retrofitted rooftops, highway right-‐of ways, and other interstitial space within the city by urban farms and gardens is now accepted urban practice (Hodgson, 2011). In the post-‐industrial cities of the world, the Urban Agricultural movement has been further facilitated by the host of books and documentary films released over the past decade which decry the health and environmental costs associated with the dominant industrialized agricultural system, and by a growing movement that seeks to utilize urban agriculture as a way of mitigating central city food deserts and
The Ocean Above Us is an annotated children’s story. The prose poem captures roughly 100 years of... more The Ocean Above Us is an annotated children’s story. The prose poem captures roughly 100 years of future history beginning with the California drought and exploring the series of events that follow in its wake – eventually leading to the creation of the first space elevator. The project is inspired by the confirmation of water ice on the dwarf-planet Ceres – and the potential for that water to aid in human colonization of the solar system. The annotation explores this future history in greater depth, intentionally blurring contemporary and historic thought with future imaginings. While the content of the book is fictional, it is based in historical and contemporary scientific fact and well documented scientific speculation.
Abstract: For earlier generations of Americans the agricultural middle landscape, that which is n... more Abstract: For earlier generations of Americans the agricultural middle landscape, that which is neither wilderness nor civilization, held great meaning. Acting not only as a symbol of American opportunity and potential, but as an acute visual reminder of the egalitarian ideal at the heart of the new nation. Today, as Americans have become increasingly urban and the rural has grown increasingly separate from our daily lives, we are left with a strong disconnect between what was, and remains, a moral and national ideal, and a mostly urban lifestyle and environment. This thesis suggests new ways of engaging the pastoral idiom within an urban setting. Using emerging productive technologies to harness the potential of interstitial urban land, and thereby engaging the urban population visually, intellectually, and materially with their landscape as a productive rather then decorative element. It is my hypothesis that such a change would help to reconnect the urban population with the landscape and the symbolism it once conveyed. The possibility of using urban spaces for material purposes is investigated through case studies which consider emerging land based technologies. Each technology is presented with an introduction and discussion of it properties, benefits and limitations, along with graphic data and information concerning their uses and implementation. I then investigate interstitial highway and rail lands within the context of Columbus, Ohio for their potential to support productive uses. This study was conducted using aerial photography of Franklin County, Ohio and ArcGlS as a means to compile spatial, topographic, maintenance, and soils information concerning each parcel of interstitial land. In total, this study revealed over six thousand acres of usable land within highway and rail related landscapes. Site design applications are given with the intent of broader applicability. Findings suggest that these highly visible landscapes have the potential to support a small but significant portion of the local consumption of fuel, electricity, and water. More importantly, this thesis offers up the potential of a new paradigm for the working landscape, one that looks beyond traditional agricultural, industrial, or representational aims to identify the 21st century's middle landscape. In so doing it postulates a way for a new generation of Americans to re-engage the pastoral as a nationalistic symbol without resorting to the chauvinistic impulse associated with prior nationalistic movements.
Society of Architectural Historians
2018 Annual Conference Session
Climatic Landscapes Call for ... more Society of Architectural Historians 2018 Annual Conference Session Climatic Landscapes Call for Papers
At least since Hippocrates first introduced humoral theory to the corpus of western medicine in the 5 th century BC, western society has speculated on the capacity for humans to both shape and to be shaped by climate. Consequently, until the early 20 th century a significant portion of western medical texts contained advice on urban and landscape design aimed at the modification of climate (temperature, exposure, humidity, precipitation) for the protection and preservation of European health and well-being. Geographers like Denis Cosgrove and Clarence Glacken have documented the important role that this fundamentally social conception of climate played in shaping the imaginative worldview that European colonial powers carried with them across the globe. But historians have documented very little about the specific landscapes or landscape rhetoric that result from this entanglement of ecological systems and human desires, let alone the methods and technologies complicit in shaping them. This session seeks to explore the relationship between landscape and the modification of climate by asking several interrelated questions: Can we understand the historical alteration of landscapes globally through the lens of climate? In what ways do past conceptions of climate lead to specific landscape adaptations? How do techno-social expectations, fears or desires around particular climates lead to varying attempts to alter them? What do historical conceptions of climate reveal about contemporary reactions to climate change? Papers should focus on real, non-metaphorical, attempts to alter climate. The session is open to studies of this topic in both western and non-western contexts. Case studies documenting the discourse around specific designed or vernacular landscapes are especially welcome as paper topics.
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2018 Annual Conference Session
Climatic Landscapes Call for Papers
At least since Hippocrates first introduced humoral theory to the corpus of western medicine in the 5 th century BC, western society has speculated on the capacity for humans to both shape and to be shaped by climate. Consequently, until the early 20 th century a significant portion of western medical texts contained advice on urban and landscape design aimed at the modification of climate (temperature, exposure, humidity, precipitation) for the protection and preservation of European health and well-being. Geographers like Denis Cosgrove and Clarence Glacken have documented the important role that this fundamentally social conception of climate played in shaping the imaginative worldview that European colonial powers carried with them across the globe. But historians have documented very little about the specific landscapes or landscape rhetoric that result from this entanglement of ecological systems and human desires, let alone the methods and technologies complicit in shaping them. This session seeks to explore the relationship between landscape and the modification of climate by asking several interrelated questions: Can we understand the historical alteration of landscapes globally through the lens of climate? In what ways do past conceptions of climate lead to specific landscape adaptations? How do techno-social expectations, fears or desires around particular climates lead to varying attempts to alter them? What do historical conceptions of climate reveal about contemporary reactions to climate change? Papers should focus on real, non-metaphorical, attempts to alter climate. The session is open to studies of this topic in both western and non-western contexts. Case studies documenting the discourse around specific designed or vernacular landscapes are especially welcome as paper topics.
http://www.sah.org/conferences-and-programs/2018-conference---saint-paul/2018-call-for-papers#16
2018 Annual Conference Session
Climatic Landscapes Call for Papers
At least since Hippocrates first introduced humoral theory to the corpus of western medicine in the 5 th century BC, western society has speculated on the capacity for humans to both shape and to be shaped by climate. Consequently, until the early 20 th century a significant portion of western medical texts contained advice on urban and landscape design aimed at the modification of climate (temperature, exposure, humidity, precipitation) for the protection and preservation of European health and well-being. Geographers like Denis Cosgrove and Clarence Glacken have documented the important role that this fundamentally social conception of climate played in shaping the imaginative worldview that European colonial powers carried with them across the globe. But historians have documented very little about the specific landscapes or landscape rhetoric that result from this entanglement of ecological systems and human desires, let alone the methods and technologies complicit in shaping them. This session seeks to explore the relationship between landscape and the modification of climate by asking several interrelated questions: Can we understand the historical alteration of landscapes globally through the lens of climate? In what ways do past conceptions of climate lead to specific landscape adaptations? How do techno-social expectations, fears or desires around particular climates lead to varying attempts to alter them? What do historical conceptions of climate reveal about contemporary reactions to climate change? Papers should focus on real, non-metaphorical, attempts to alter climate. The session is open to studies of this topic in both western and non-western contexts. Case studies documenting the discourse around specific designed or vernacular landscapes are especially welcome as paper topics.
http://www.sah.org/conferences-and-programs/2018-conference---saint-paul/2018-call-for-papers#16