Environment and Resource Management in Early Modern Europe
For the next Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting (Philadelphia, 2-4 April 2020), we are seeking to organize a series of panels on the environment and what may, perhaps anachronistically, be called “resource management” in the early modern world, from 1300-1700. We envision panels that deal with several possible interpretive and thematic issues; the list of topics below, however, is not meant to be exclusive. We welcome all topics that fit the general theme from scholars in art, art history, history, literature, music, and philosophy and, in particular, submissions that are interdisciplinary in nature.
- the Anthropocene
- infrastructures
- environment and daily life
- planning, surveying
- local histories, chronicles, chorographical, topographical, and geographical works, maps
- crisis management
- management of critical resources, including but not limited to wood, peat, and water
- animal-human interactions
- war and the environment
- “state” and local (city, village, rural, manorial) initiatives
- impact of the Little Ice Age and revisions of this historiography
- oceans, mountains, plains, forests, rivers, and lakes
- “conservation,” “sustainability,” and concerns about “posterity”
- landscapes, wildernesses, and wastelands
- environmental impact of early modern “industries”
- “waste,” waste management, and pollution