The third edition of this doctoral workshop will consider the plurality of making environmental studies and the plurality of disciplines in environmental studies: environmental history, sociology, geo-history, science studies, historical geography, political ecology, environmental archeology, anthropology… The workshop will be organized around four main themes: “Historiographies and new ways of writing history in the Anthropocene era”; “Global scale and situated environments”; “The earth’s archives: traces, landscapes, and collection”; “Materiality and earth relations”. T

Presentation

« Environmental studies and social sciences ». The third edition of the doctoral workshop The Mediterranean : a laboratory of global history and globalization, co-organized by École française de Rome and EHESS, will consider the plurality of making environmental studies and the plurality of disciplines in environmental studies : environmental history, sociology, geo-history, science studies, historical geography, political ecology, environmental archeology, anthropology… The workshop will be organized around four main themes: « Historiographies and new ways of writing history in the Anthropocene era » ; « Global scale and situated environments » ; « The earth’s archives : traces, landscapes, and collection » ; « Materiality and earth relations ». The workshop is open to PhD candidates and students in M2 (second year of Master’s) from all disciplines and working on all historical periods. Deadline for submitting applications : June 5th, 2017.

Argument

Over the last decade, environmental studies have strongly developed and generated numerous debates within the social sciences. The Anthropocene narrative – which portrays the Earth as having entered a new geological era, induced by an unprecedented geological action of humankind on a global scale – has sparked heated debates. It seems that the Anthropocene is now challenging the field of history. Such a hypothesis suggests not only that nature should be re-integrated into history, but also, and more radically, that one should  reconsider the “humanist” foundations on which Western modernity was built, by dissociating  ‘natural history’ and ‘human history’. In this critique of the very foundations of the discipline, the examination of a certain model for governing society and nature (that of the modern and industrial West) encounters, and is relayed by, a series of anthropological and scientific studies contributing to critically revising European modernity and its categories.

How can we understand today this call for new ways of doing history? How was ‘natural history’ born, on which grounds, with what kind of – material and written – archives? How did the great divide between Nature and Culture develop within this framework? How does environmental history claim to overcome this great divide? Which archives could environmental studies use for responding to its ambitious project of interdisciplinary studies encompassing social and natural sciences?

The environment is, therefore, not only a new object or a new territory for historiographical investigation. It is precisely the relationships between societies, sciences, and the environment that we wish to discuss in this interdisciplinary doctoral workshop, co-organized by EFR and EHESS. The question at the heart of this workshop will be the shifting relationship between nature, environment and sciences within the framework of the longue durée. We will consider the plurality of making environmental studies and the plurality of disciplines in environmental studies: environmental history, sociology, geo-history, science studies, historical geography, political ecology, environmental archeology, anthropology… This workshop invites us to create forums where diverse disciplinary and historiographical traditions, which all too often ignore each other, can be discussed together. Taking place in Rome, this workshop should be the occasion to highlight the precursory role played by Italian scholars, within the European frame, in discussing the proposals of environmental history coming from the States since the 1980s, while fueling an interesting dialogue with historical geography, English local history and historical ecology. Within this framework, critical attention has been paid to the production and uses of archives.

Main themes

The workshop will be organized around four main themes:

• “Historiographies and new ways of writing history in the Anthropocene era”;
• “Global scale and situated environments”;
• “The earth’s archives: traces, landscapes, and collection”;
• “Materiality and earth relations”.

Submission guidelines 

The workshop is open to PhD candidates and students in M2 (second year of Master’s) from all disciplines and all nationalities. Lectures in the morning will be followed by workshops based on presentations of students’ work in the afternoon. The seminars and presentations can be held in French, Italian or English.

Please send your application to the following address,

before June 5^th, 2017:

secrmod@efrome.it

It should contain:

• A letter of motivation;
• A curriculum vitae (max. 3 pages), including a description of the ongoing research and its timetable;
• An abstract (min. 4000 characters) of the proposed paper;
• A letter of recommendation.

The candidates admitted are requested to participate in all the seminars and lectures.

Participants will be asked to send to the organizers, by September 15^th, 2017, 6 to 8 pages of presentation of their own research emphasizing their sources or fieldwork, and including a short bibliography.

The cost of the workshop, including lunch and accommodation, will be covered by the École française de Rome and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Participants must cover the cost of their own travel to and from Rome.

For further information, please contact Claire Challéat, scientific referent for the early-modern and modern period at the École française de Rome, Piazza Farnese 67, Roma, e-mail: secrmod@efrome.it

Scientific committee

• Alice Ingold (EHESS),
• Fabrice Jesné (EFR),
• Niccolò Mignemi (EFR),
• Silvia Sebastiani (EHESS).