Applicants should complete this form, and email it along with their C.V. to TravelGrant@envirotechweb.org. Any questions should be addressed to Chair, Envirotech Travel Grant, and submitted by email to TravelGrant@envirotechweb.org.

• Download travel grant application form (.doc format)

On the behalf of the prize committee:

Timothy LeCain
Erik Rau
Heike Weber

The Tarr Prize carries a cash award of $250 and will be conferred at the Society for the History of Technology conference in Cleveland, Ohio, November 3-6, 2011.

Send one copy of your article and a brief curriculum vitae (one page Word or PDF files only please) to prize@envirotechweb.org to be considered. The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2011.

In the piece, Gardner examines the first federal tree nursery in the Nebraska Sand Hills as an example of how high modernist motivations and ecological realities combine. Instead of managing a forest, the foresters of the Sand Hills tried to build one, and in the process, came to embrace biological diversity rather than standardization. While the managers could rationalize and control individual seedlings in the nursery, ecological complexity in the landscape proved harder to control.

The prize committee believes that “Constructing a Technological Forest” shows how far envirotech has become as an established subdiscipline. Gardner explicitly situates the piece within the envirotech mandate to consider both the environment and technology as symmetrical: “Realizing that the influences of environment and technology are always reciprocal, the concept of envirotechnical analysis suggests that the integration of the natural and human artifice is frequently so complete as to eliminate any logically meaningful boundary between the two” (278). He draws on earlier cutting-edge envirotechnical work and pushes it in new directions. Referring to the articles in on Schrepfer and Scranton’s Industrializing Organisms, he uses the methods offered to think about a wholly different “organism”: an engineered forest.  Likewise, Gardner’s work draws on other founding books and articles in the area, including those by Richard White, Thomas Hughes, and Edmund Russell.

Gardner makes several innovative suggestions in the course of his paper. One of his most intriguing is the counterintuitive assertion that scientists learned more about forest ecology through creating a new forest than by managing an existing one. This is an important contribution to the history of forests and forestry in that it offers a very different story than the typically declensionist one told by Langston, Opie, and others, in which forest managers sought to simplify complex systems with destructive results. Likewise, it counters the oft-used high-modernist arguments of James Scott, as Gardner’s work suggests at least some forest engineers were trying to create greater complexity rather than pursuing reductionist simplification. From a history of technology perspective, Gardner’s work is also innovative in the way it reveals assembly line and mass production methodologies and mindsets at work in creating this technological forest, from the “manufacture” of the seedlings to the regimentation of labor in their planting.

Gardner’s use of entirely new archival material offers a fine-grained perspective on the Sand Hills forest – from the earliest scientific booster efforts of the 1880s to the importation of thousands of seeds and seedlings in the early 1900s to the hot and sweaty days planting seedlings in the sandy slopes to the enjoyment of the new forest by regular campers – effectively eliminating the boundary between nature and technology.

We hope to see many of you there.

Envirotech will be having an informal meeting during the World Congress of Environmental History in Copenhagen. The meeting will be Friday, 7 August, 16:00 – 17:00 at Cafe Væksthuset ( a nearby cafe constructed from an old University of Copenhagen greenhouse). The meeting will include ample time to meet and greet fellow envirotechies, share individual project & publication news, and get updated on happenings within the organization.

We will have a reserved space in the cafe for the group but no refreshments will be provided. Attendees are encouraged to buy food and/or drink at the cafe and bring it to our tables, since the cafe is not charging us to meet there. A sample of their offerings can be viewed at http://www.cafe.life.ku.dk/Udvalg.aspx (in Danish).

If you are interested in attending the meeting, please email me at dolly@jorgensenweb.net (this is not a commitment to attend but it will help the cafe know how many people will be there). I will send out a map with walking directions from the conference site to the cafe to those who email me.

The main topic of discussion was the proposal from SHOT to give all the SIGs a slot on Sunday morning at the conference in Pittsburgh this fall.   There was general agreement that the time should not be used for either a traditional panel or a workshop specifically related to teaching. The suggestion that received the most support was to have an open-ended discussion by all participants about their research and new projects. The purpose would be to encourage “risky ideas” on the part of people considering new perspectives and possibilities.

Therefore, we are seeking 4-5 people with new projects (article, book, syllabus, teaching technology, other) who want to present their emerging ideas and questions in a discussion amenable to the exploration of possibilities and risky ideas. If interested, please contact Ann Greene or Hugh Gorman.

The group also discussed David Nye’s suggestion that the Envirotech prize be given a name. However, the group decided to think about possible names and to discuss the topic again at SHOT in the fall.

Announcements:

1) Envirotech needs a new co-convener, as it is time for Ann Greene to step down. If interested, contact Ann and Hugh.

2) A reminder that there will be an Envirotech meeting at SHOT in Pittsburgh this October.

3) The First World Congress of Environmental History will be held in Copenhagen this August. Dolly Jorgensen is organizing an Envirotech meeting at the WCEH; contact her if you will be at the conference.

4) We will present the next Envirotech prize at ASEH 2010 in Portland, Oregon.  Dolly Jorgensen is chair of the committee.

5) The University of Virginia Press has approved the Envirotech book. It is slated for publication in the second half of 2011, possibly in time for fall course adoptions.

6. Frank Uekötter encouraged people interested in fellowships to visit the website for The Rachel Carson Center for Environmental Studies, which is a joint initiative of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and the Deutsches Museum.

7). A reminder to send all website postings and listserv questions to Finn Arne Jørgensen at news@envirotechweb.org.

– Ann Greene

The SHOT program committee has reserved six rooms holding about fifty people each for this purpose.  SHOT has a total of twelve SIGs, so the 2009 program committee should have no problem filling the spaces.  The question is whether Envirotech wants to reserve a room during this slot.  If so, we need to let SHOT secretary Bernie Carlson know by Feb. 15.  At the ASEH meeting in Tallahassee, we can decide how to use the time.

What kind of session or activity? It could be a routine paper or roundtable session or something a little different, such as a poster session, teaching workshop, or even a book discussion.  It is up to us to decide.

Please reply in the comments section below if you have any interest in organizing something for that slot (or have thoughts on the matter).

All the best,
Hugh Gorman (hsgorman@mtu.edu) and Ann Greene, Envirotech co-chairs

p.s. If you have any additional items to get on the agenda for the Envirotech breakfast (Sat., Feb 28) at the 2009 ASEH conference in Tallahassee, let us know.

The voting closes January 16, so all those of you who are ASEH members should head over there to vote.