CfP: Knowing Nature: The Changing Foundations of Environmental Knowledge
Type: Call for Papers
Date: May 25, 2017 to May 27, 2017
Location: China
Subject Fields: Chinese
History / Studies, Environmental History / Studies, Geography, History
of Science, Medicine, and Technology, World History / Studies
An international conference to be held in Beijing,
Renmin University of China,
25-27 May 2017
Co-Sponsored
by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Ludwig
Maximilian University, Munich, and the Center for Ecological History,
Renmin University of China, Beijing, with the collaboration of the Max
Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Who
knows nature best? Over the past 10,000 years competing communities of
knowledge have evolved, each with formalized standards and processes.
Peasants have competed against craftsmen, religious leaders, and urban
experts. In modern societies based on science and technology, the claims
to knowledge have changed even more dramatically, although scientific
knowledge still competes with other bodies of knowledge. And always, who
gets to define knowledge can have profound consequences for the natural
world.
For our conference we seek proposals that examine what has
been seen and understood as measurable, speculative, safe or unsafe and
how scale (of landscapes, research projects etc.) can affect knowledge
production. We welcome proposals on the rise of new fields of knowledge
about nature and the environment and their search for disciplinary and
institutional stability. Our conference will seek to move beyond simple
dichotomies (modernity vs. tradition, science vs. religion, folk wisdom
vs. urban ignorance), to develop comparisons that cross national
boundaries, and to bring neglected parts of the globe and time into
view.
Our keynote speaker will be Dagmar Schäfer, managing
director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in
Berlin, and author of The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and
Technology in Seventeenth-Century China (University of Chicago Press,
2011).
This conference is open to all ranks of scholars, from
graduate students to senior professors. Paper proposals should be
one-page long (or about 300 words) and include a title and a one- or
two-page CV.
Send
proposals to conference secretary Agnes Kneitz, Assistant Professor of
History at Renmin University at this address: a.kneitz[at]ruc.edu.cn.
The deadline for consideration is 1 January 2017.
Successful
proposals will be announced around 1 February, and complete drafts of
papers (minimum of 5,000 words in English or the equivalent in Chinese
characters) will be required by 1 May 2017. All papers will be
circulated to the participants in advance and will not be orally
presented during the conference.
The members of the selection
committee include Mingfang Xia, Director of the Center for Ecological
History and Senior Professor in the School of History, Renmin University
of China; Helmuth Trischler, Head of Research at the Deutsches Museum,
Munich, and Co-Director of the Rachel Carson Center; and Donald Worster,
Hall Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, University of Kansas,
and Distinguished Foreign Expert, Renmin University.
The
organizing chairperson for the conference is Professor Shen Hou, Deputy
Director of the Center for Ecological History and Associate Professor of
history at Renmin University.
Travel expenses for scholars
living outside of China will be reimbursed by the Rachel Carson Center.
Scholars living within China should depend on their own universities for
covering travel expenses. For all participants, hotel accommodations
for four nights and all meals will be covered by Renmin University of
China.
Following the conference we will organize a group field
trip to the Great Wall as a site and symbol of what Joseph Needham
called “science and civilization in China.”
Contact Email: