Deadline Call for Papers, Atmospheric Humanities Conference II
Call for Papers, Atmospheric Humanities Conference II
1-3 November 2024, at the Historical and Popular Art Museum of Aegina, Greece
Small island countries in the Caribbean and the Pacific and Indian Ocean have always been exposed to extreme weather, but the last decades have made it clear that they are also the biggest future victims of climate change. However, islands are also key sites in the history of science. Much weather and climate knowledge derives from island sites. When European and North American countries started launching weather balloons around 1900 to measure the upper atmosphere, next to ships, islands formed key launching sites. Islands were ideal places to measure the interaction of the global atmosphere, the land and the ocean. The Keeling curve was the result of decades of accurate and continuous measurements at Mauna Loa observatory on Hawaii. Moreover, islands have also became important meteorological metaphors: think about ‘heat islands’ in urban cities, where microclimates create islands where before there were none.
Our conference explores a new terrain in this constellation of themes, asking questions related to the emerging field of the atmospheric humanities. We invite historians, STS and humanities scholars to rethink existing research, open up new fields and engage with new directions that the environmental humanities could take by more explicitly thinking with the atmospheric world. Islands form an ideal subject where land-based and oceanic histories could benefit from engaging with a third domain: the aerial.
For more information about the many different conference themes, see: https://meteohistory.org/2024/insular-weathers-global-atmospheres-exploring-the-aerial-histories-of-islands/#more-1399
The deadline for submittals is May 15th, 2024.
Organization Committee:
Robert-Jan Wille, History and Philosophy of Science, Freudenthal Institute, UU
Vladimir Jankovic, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), The University of Manchester
George N. Vlahakis, Laboratory of Science, Technology and Medicine Communication, Hellenic Open University