Workshop to be held at the Australian National University, 12–13 November 2024, convened by James Dunk (University of Sydney) and Ruth Morgan (ANU), with discussants Warwick Anderson (Sydney), Tom Griffiths (ANU, Emeritus), Libby Robin (ANU, Emeritus), and Sverker Sörlin (KTH Stockholm).
We live in a planetary age, Earth looming large and beginning to rupture under the demands that certain humans have been making of it. In the late 1980s environmental historian Donald Worster called on historians to write two histories: the history of their own country (or other specialisation) and ‘the history of all peoples colliding and cooperating with one another on a shrinking island in space.’[1] A quarter of the way into a century in which sober voices have predicted the collapse of human civilisations, we suggest that now all history is planetary, and all stories are planetary stories. This workshop asks how we write them.
We invite expressions of interest from EMCRs and HDR students and other writers who are wrestling with the planetary in their work, in environmental history, the history of science, technology, health and medicine, in economic, political history, national, local, or any history or storytelling which draws on history, in which planetary themes and processes enter the foreground, or the planet emerges as a main actor. We encourage applications from those who want to write the planetary, even if they have not yet figured out how.
We’re able to offer modest support for domestic travel for those who are invited to participate.
The full call for papers can be found here. Please send a 250–300 word expression of interest in this discussion and practice-focused workshop, describing how you are writing the planetary, or how you want to be in your work, together with a 100-word biographical statement, to james.dunk@sydney.edu.au by Wednesday 25 September.
[1] Donald Worster, ‘The Vulnerable Earth: Toward a Planetary History,’ Environmental Review 11, no. 2 (1987): 90.
