Professor Peter van Dam (University of Amsterdam) and Dr Mario Daniels (Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam), in cooperation with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD, Deutsche Akademischer Austauschdienst) jointly call for PhD papers for a PhD Workshop with Professor Sandra Mass (Ruhr-Universität-Bochum).
While geographers have debated for quite some time whether the Anthropocene as a geological epoch started 500, 250, or just 70 years ago, historians have only just begun to notice the epoch. Broadly defined as the era in which humans have come to constitute a geological force capable of impacting the global climate, the concept among other things challenges us to rethink the ways in which historical actors related to their environment, to people in other parts of the world, and to reconsider the timescales in which we situate our histories.
How do we relate to the Anthropocene in our scholarship? Does the concept inspire or terrify us? Do we employ it as a conceptual framework, a loose collection of questions, or as a counterpoint to our own approach? During this workshop, it will be explored what the Anthropocene means to us in writing histories, thus probing what it means to write history at this moment of confluence of many environmental crises, to what extent present concerns productively inform our work.
Participants of this workshop are inivited to reflect on the ways in which their work grapples with these problems and questions. The workshop takes its cue from the work of Sandra Mass, Professor of Transnational History at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. She will present insights from her upcoming book Clio contaminated: Geschichtsschreibung im Anthropozän. Participants whose work implicitly considers the concerns which come to the fore around the notion of the Anthropocene or explicitly addresses the concept of the Anthropocene are welcome to apply. The workshop will be centered around the discussion of pre-circulated papers (no more than 5000 words) which will be due on April 16.
If you are interested in participating, please send a title and a short outline of the paper you would like to present by e-mail to Professor Peter van Dam.
The workshop will be hosted in conjunction with a lecture on ‘Writing history in the Anthropocene’ by Professor Sandra Mass on the preceding day, 25 April 2024, 17:00-19:00 at the academic-cultural podium Spui 25 (Spui 25, 1012 WX Amsterdam).
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