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The Boston Environmental History Seminar is an occasion for scholars as well as interested members of the public to discuss aspects of American environmental history from prehistory to the present day. Presenters come from a variety of disciplines including history, urban planning, and environmental management. Six to eight sessions take place annually during the academic year, and most focus on works in progress.
Seminar meetings revolve around the discussion of a precirculated paper. Sessions open with remarks from the essayist and an assigned commentator, after which the discussion is opened to the floor. After each session, the Society serves a light buffet supper.
Subscribe to this seminar series for $25, and you will receive access to the seminar papers for THREE series: the Boston Area Early American History Seminar, the Boston Environmental History Seminar, and the Boston Seminar on Modern American Society and Culture. We recognize that topics frequently resonate across these three fields; now, mix and match the seminars that you attend!
October
In 1861, the transcontinental telegraph was completed, allowing signals to be transmitted through wires from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This system, often overshadowed by the transcontinental railroad, advanced three great projects of American history: expanding capitalism, building the state, and conquering nature with technology. This essay focuses on the models of capital accumulation employed in building the telegraph and on the financial models and environments that made regional telegraph networks with different features.
MoreIn 1808, John Palmer Parker inaugurated rapid changes to Hawaii’s economy by building a beef and hide industry that would facilitate the U.S. annexation of the archipelago. Lacher’s essay, “The Paniolos of Parker Ranch: Cattle Ranching on the Slopes of Mauna Kea,” examines this site of environmental transformation and cultural exchange. Roberts’s paper, “A Dog’s History of Early New England: Indigenous Dogs in the Societies and Ecology of the Northeast,” argues that dogs should be considered as Native American livestock that were raised to fulfill a wide variety of tasks including serving as hunting partners and sources of meat. The essay further considers the mutal influences of European contact, the dog population, other wildlife, and human disease.
MoreDevienne’s essay, “Shifting Sands: A Social and Environmental History of Los Angeles’s Beaches, 1920s-1970s” examines the beaches as urban spaces whose modernization had profound consequences for the working-class. The beach clean-up and enlargement turned a popular shoreline into a semi-privatized playground for the white middle class. Nelson’s essay, “Assembling the Metropolis, Arresting the Metropolis: Competing Unit Geographies of Boston and Its Region, 1890-1930,” approaches parks as landscapes that express attitudes toward community, polity, and territory. By examining Sylvester Baxter’s metropolitan parks and Benton MacKaye’s Bay Circuit, it explores the intellectual tensions between Progressivism and the radical cultural regionalism that followed.
MoreReardon's paper is “New England’s Pre-Industrial River Commons: Culture and Economy.” Roberts's essay is “The Private Commons: Oyster Planting in Nineteenth-Century Connecticut.”
More
In 1861, the transcontinental telegraph was completed, allowing signals to be transmitted through wires from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This system, often overshadowed by the transcontinental railroad, advanced three great projects of American history: expanding capitalism, building the state, and conquering nature with technology. This essay focuses on the models of capital accumulation employed in building the telegraph and on the financial models and environments that made regional telegraph networks with different features.
closeIn 1808, John Palmer Parker inaugurated rapid changes to Hawaii’s economy by building a beef and hide industry that would facilitate the U.S. annexation of the archipelago. Lacher’s essay, “The Paniolos of Parker Ranch: Cattle Ranching on the Slopes of Mauna Kea,” examines this site of environmental transformation and cultural exchange. Roberts’s paper, “A Dog’s History of Early New England: Indigenous Dogs in the Societies and Ecology of the Northeast,” argues that dogs should be considered as Native American livestock that were raised to fulfill a wide variety of tasks including serving as hunting partners and sources of meat. The essay further considers the mutal influences of European contact, the dog population, other wildlife, and human disease.
closeDevienne’s essay, “Shifting Sands: A Social and Environmental History of Los Angeles’s Beaches, 1920s-1970s” examines the beaches as urban spaces whose modernization had profound consequences for the working-class. The beach clean-up and enlargement turned a popular shoreline into a semi-privatized playground for the white middle class. Nelson’s essay, “Assembling the Metropolis, Arresting the Metropolis: Competing Unit Geographies of Boston and Its Region, 1890-1930,” approaches parks as landscapes that express attitudes toward community, polity, and territory. By examining Sylvester Baxter’s metropolitan parks and Benton MacKaye’s Bay Circuit, it explores the intellectual tensions between Progressivism and the radical cultural regionalism that followed.
closeReardon's paper is “New England’s Pre-Industrial River Commons: Culture and Economy.” Roberts's essay is “The Private Commons: Oyster Planting in Nineteenth-Century Connecticut.”
close