BBC für Umweltgeschichte im WS 2020/21: Michelle Mart (Berks, USA) und Juliane Schlag (Providence, USA)

Zeit: 18-20 Uhr | Online

Online-Vorträge von Michelle Mart (Berks, USA) und Juliane Schlag (Providence, USA) im Berlin-Brandenburger Colloquium (BBC) für Umweltgeschichte im Wintersemester 2020/21

Veranstalter des BBC für Umweltgeschichte:
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin) in Kooperation mit dem Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (ZZF Potsdam)
Organisation: Dr. Jan-Henrik Meyer (ZZF Potsdam), Dr. Astrid M. Kirchhof (HU Berlin)

Michelle Mart (Berks, USA): Six Women Who Changed What We Ate: Intersections of Food, Culture, and the Environment in Modern America
This talk is based on a book project that uses profiles of six women to illuminate evolving American foodways in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  American foodways are always changing, perhaps never more so then in the post-World War II period when pervasive abundance, industrial agriculture and processing, and international experiences brought new opportunities as well as new constraints.  This book examines those opportunities and constraints, and the competing pressures they placed on Americans as they chose what to eat.  Should pleasure or practicality guide food choices?  Are health and nutrition the best measure of food, or are cost and taste equally important?  Should the environmental impact of food production affect what people eat?  Answers to these questions, among others, helped to shift American foodways in sometimes surprising directions. The stories of these women help us to understand how food was a statement of cultural values, while also a reflection of economic systems and assumptions about industrial agriculture and the environment.

Michelle Mart studies the cultural aspects of foreign policy, environmental history, and food history.  She is the author of Pesticides, A Love Story: America’s Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals (2015), a cultural history of pesticide use in the United States from 1945 to the present.  Previously, she wrote about the intersections of cultural history and foreign policy in her book, Eye on Israel: How America Came to View Israel as an Ally (2006).  Currently, she is working on the book that is the subject of this talk, an investigation of the intersections of food, culture, and the environment in modern America.  She is an Associate Professor of History at Penn State University, Berks Campus.
 

Juliane Schlag (Providence, USA): North-Eastern Forest Landscapes of the Colonial Era. Case Studies from New England, 1500-1850
Based on an interdisciplinary combination of methods from pollen analysis, history, and archaeology, the talk analyzes the ecological consequences of colonial deforestation in New England. Landcover changes in three case study areas during the colonial era 1500 to 1850 are explored as a window into the lasting effects of human interactions with the natural world. Following the ecological footprint of colonial and Abenaki actors, the talk answers the questions of how (1) colonialism transformed woodlands, (2) changed local human relationships with the treed landscape, and (3) created a relatively fragile post-colonial environment vulnerable to an increasing number of anthropogenic and natural disturbances.
The talk investigates the landcover history of three forests in New England, which prior to their transformation by European settlers were home to diverse Abenaki cultures. Looking at the colonial transition period from around 1500 to 1850, the talk analyzes changes in landcover and forest composition and links them to cultural shifts in landuse and long-term ecosystem transformations. The canopy histories of Titicut Swamp near Raynham (MA), Berry Pond near Pittsfield (MA), and Upper South Branch Pond (ME) will be discussed, linking their different ecological settings to historical dynamics of deforestation under colonial rule. Comparing the three case studies, the talk will close by arguing that deforestation under colonial rule subjected forest ecosystem to severe short-term destruction intervals from which local forest in New England still struggles to recover. Thus, the ecological footprints of former empires outlive their geopolitical function as resource areas or expansion zones and can result in eroded post-colonial ecosystems, vulnerable to socio-ecological decline.

Juliane Schlag is a historical geographer investigating deciduous- and boreal forest landscape changes in response to colonialism. For her Ph.D., she used archaeological-, historical-, and pollen-based information to recreate a vegetation history of New England linked to changes from Native Abenaki to settler landuse. Now a VOSS Post Doc at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, her current research project focuses on vegetation histories of areas in Northeast Asia that were deforested under Japanese, colonial rule in the early 20th century. Her research interests include Ethnobotany, Landscape Ecology, Landuse History, Material Culture, and Animal History. As part of her research, she has been a visiting scholar to the University of Maine, Orono, the American Antiquarian Society, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Centre of Global Development at Shanghai University.