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Event

Historians and the Anthropocene

Climate denialism comes in many forms. While most historians understand that the planet faces severe environmental challenges, few consider its impact on our profession. Professors Julia Adeney Thomas and John McNeill will argue that both Earth history and human history have now entered a new epoch, the Anthropocene, a time in which humankind exerts a dominant influence over basic features of the global environment and consider what that means for the practice of history. McNeill explains why some geologists find "the Anthropocene" a compelling concept and explores the new relationship between earth science and history, focusing on the peculiarities of periodization in history vs geology. Thomas speaks to the issues of historical agency and history's political function arguing that Anthropocene history is not the same as environmental history.

Date & Time

Friday
Nov. 17, 2017
2:00pm聽鈥撀3:30pm ET

Location

5th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center

Overview

Climate denialism comes in many forms.聽 While most historians understand that the planet faces severe environmental challenges, few consider its impact on our profession. Professors Julia Adeney Thomas and John McNeill will argue that both Earth history and human history have now entered a new epoch, the Anthropocene, a time in which humankind exerts a dominant influence over basic features of the global environment and consider what that means for the practice of history. McNeill explains why some geologists find "the Anthropocene" a compelling concept and explores the new relationship between earth science and history, focusing on the peculiarities of periodization in history vs geology.聽 Thomas speaks to the issues of historical agency and history's political function arguing that Anthropocene history is not the same as environmental history.

Julia Adeney Thomas teaches history at the University of Notre Dame. Her publications include聽聽(winner of the AHA John K. Fairbank Prize),聽,聽and more than forty articles including "History and Biology in the Anthropocene: Questions of Scale, Questions of Value" in the聽础贬搁听and "The Uneasy Alliance between Scientists and Non-Scientists in the Neoliberal University" in聽Environmental History.

John McNeill is a historian at Georgetown University and a member of the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Union of the Geological Sciences.聽 His most recent books are (with Peter Engelke) and (winner of the AHA Beveridge Prize).

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is sponsored jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and 澳门六合彩's聽History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and the George Washington University History Department for their support.


Hosted By

History and Public Policy Program

The History and Public Policy Program聽makes public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, facilitates scholarship based on those records, and uses these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs.  Read more

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