The Nature of Health, the Health of Nature: Perspectives from History and the Humanities
Since Rachel Carson’s path-breaking book Silent Spring (1962), many experts and citizens have been trying to understand how the health of nature and of human beings are related in the past, present, and future. Old concepts of disease and illness have been challenged by more holistic approaches that link humans to their environmental conditions. Toxic residues in the air, water, and soil have moved to the forefront of medical analysis, while ecologists have tried to define what a “healthy ecosystem” or “a healthy Earth” might mean.
This workshop will bring scholars to address such questions as these:
- How have definitions of health changed over time, and how have politics, science, religion, and other forces influenced those definitions?
- What connections have different cultures and societies made between the human body and nature in the past?
- How have discourses on human health and imaginaries of environmental degradation and planetary decay been linked? What effect have planetary trends such as climate change had on human and nonhuman health?