Rachel Carson Center (LMU RCC) - SD

By Rachel Carson Center (RCC)Education

Rachel Carson Center (LMU RCC) - SD episodes

May 04, 2011 An Integrated Environmental History of Watersheds
How have humans changed rivers throughout history, and what issues of social and environmental justice shape human interaction with rivers and, more generally, water? These questions shape the research of Carson Fellow Melinda Laituri, who is engaged in a comparative study between the Danube and the Colorado River. By using remotely sensed data, Laituri tracks changes in the development of the river; Laituri’s research also examines the human right to water. Melinda Laituri is currently based in the Department of Forest, Rangeland, and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University. Her research focuses on the role of the internet and geospatial technologies of disaster management and cross-cultural environmental histories of river basin management.
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May 04, 2011 An Environmental History of the Danube
Carson Fellow Martin Schmid discusses his work on writing the first environmental history of the Danube river; Schmid’s research is part of a larger project on the Danube at the Alpen-Adria-University in Vienna. The Danube has been substantially transformed since 1800 and is, according to Schmid, the most important river in Europe. In order to provide a better understanding of both the development and the importance of the Danube, Schmid begins his history in the 1500s. Martin Schmid is an assistant professor for environmental history and interdisciplinary communications at Alpen-AdriaUniversity Klagenfurt-Graz-Wien in Austria. A historian by profession, Martin is fascinated with environmental history as an interdisciplinary field, crossing the "great divide" between humanities and natural sciences.
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May 02, 2011 Facing Limits: Abundance, Scarcity, and the American Way of Life
Carson Fellow and environmental historian Donald Worster argues that the discovery of the “New World” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the most important event in modern history. These explorations gave Western society a wealth of natural resources that has never since been duplicated. Based around the controversy of the 1970s global bestseller, Limits to Growth, Worster examines the implications of the discovery of the New World and how society has transformed from one of natural abundance to one that is faced with scarcity. Donald Worster is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1989.
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May 02, 2011 Paradigmatic Shifts in Western Europe: The Importance of the New World
Carson Fellow Donald Worster argues that the discovery of the New World dramatically shaped the very idea of freedom; it significantly altered perceptions of nature, economic growth, and concepts of individuality. Donald Worster is an American environmental historian and is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1989.
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May 02, 2011 Fish, Gold, and Cotton: New World Resources in Western Europe
Exposing a phenomenon overlooked by many historians, Carson Fellow Donald Worster explains the importance of New World resources on Western European society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Worster details the role that gold, silver, fish, lumber, and cotton had on the imagination and thought processes of Europeans in this time period. Donald Worster is an American environmental historian and is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1989.
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April 26, 2011 Adaptation of Local Knowledge Societies and Systems to Global Change
Carson Fellow and Director of the Global Diversity Foundation Gary Martin examines the cultural implications of conservation designation (i.e. the system of preserving certain areas of land in national park, or related, structures from outside development). Martin explains how protected areas shape the livelihoods of those who live “next door”; he also considers the way that such structures impact both biological and cultural diversity. Gary Martin is an ethno-ecologist who focuses on the inextricable links between biological and cultural diversity and the role of communities in maintaining socio-ecological resilience. Since 1998, he has been a research fellow and lecturer at the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK and in 2000 he founded the Global Diversity Foundation (GDF).
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November 09, 2010 Hard Asphalt and Heavy Metals: An Environmental History of the Urban Crisis
Carson Fellow Robert Gioelli highlights how central city residents in the United States dealt with increasing environmental problems in the 1960s and 1970s. He focuses on three case studies—St. Louis, Chicago, and Baltimore—in order to determine how urban renewal plans and highway development shaped the lives and environmental understanding of the residents, who were often minorities. Robert Gioelli is a historian of the modern United States with a specific interest in how the perception and experience of the urban environment has shaped social movements, politics, and policy.
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November 08, 2010 Transforming Socialist Landscape
The transition from socialism to post-socialism has affected many aspects of life in Eastern Europe. By using anthropological participant-observer methodologies, Carson Fellow Stefan Dorondel looks at how this shift impacted land use in these regions; he considers both how people change in relation to the landscape and vice versa. Stefan Dorondel is an anthropologist interested in post-socialist land tenure systems and in land use change.
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September 07, 2010 Environmental Mobility History in the Making
Carson Fellow Gijs Mom describes his work on the automobile, which he sees as a vehicle for understanding how people in the early twentieth century both perceived and conquered nature. Mom relies on sources such as literature and films to determine how the car was driven and how driving changed the way that people experienced nature. Gijs Mom is a historian of technology, teaching and researching at Eindhoven University of Technology as Program Director for Mobility History.
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January 01, 2009 Image Film
Visit the RCC virtually! Shot in Munich, this film outlines the goals of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, highlights the research of the international Carson Fellows, profiles different types of events, and introduces the Center’s digital Environment & Society Portal.
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About Rachel Carson Center (LMU RCC) - SD

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The Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) is an international, interdisciplinary center for research and education in environmental humanities located in Munich, Germany. It was…