3rd World Congress of Environmental History

Show and Tell--Visual History, Graphic History, Global History

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Images are one of the main methods that people have relied on to express their relationships with, and attitudes toward, the environment for eons. Scholars in the environmental humanities have used visual sources to research human-nature relations, but many are now turning to visual media to communicate their findings and ideas as well. In this panel, we will discuss new approaches to analyzing visual material and innovative ways to present history in graphic forms.

This roundtable includes the author of a graphic history about the 1950s Nevada Atomic Test Sites in the US, an historian relying on indigenous-produced images in her work on the history of American Indian food, an architectural historian who studies energy transitions through architectural drawings and graphs/charts from the 1950s; an historian who examines how anti-toxic activists rely on images in their fight for environmental reforms; an art historian who writes about contemporary indigenous aesthetics in the American Southwest; and an artist who relies on Medieval graphic technologies and images of environmental disasters in his work on contemporary climate change issues. Our roundtable will be facilitated by the editor of the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Book Series at the University of Washington Press.

The intent of this roundtable is to encourage environmental humanities scholars to enhance their skills in reading visual sources and to experiment with new methods of presenting their research in visual form.

Sub Unit

• 3rd World Congress of Environmental History

Chair

• Arielle Helmick, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society

Presenters

• Amy Hay, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

• Yohana Junker, Graduate Theological Union Berkeley

• Andrew G Kirk, University of Nevada Las Vegas