Ellen Arnold and Richard Hoffmann have put together an exciting series of five sessions for the Kalamazoo meeting in May 2010. Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect to see.

Environmental History I-V:  Kalamazoo 2010

I: Medieval Ecological Thinking?: Ideas, Actions, Impacts

Presider: Ellen Arnold, Macalester College

“Landscape and Imagination in Egil’s Saga” Janet Schrunk Ericksen, University of Minnesota, Morris

“Ecology, Crisis and Religious Violence: The Case of the Crusading Movement, c. 1095-1320” Philip Slavin, Yale University

“Looking for Medieval Environmental Consciousness: Popular Protest and Peasant Moral Ecology in Late Medieval Britain” Vicki Szabo, Western Carolina University

II: Exploiting Wild Nature
Presider: William TeBrake, University of Maine

“The Emergence of Early Fishing Communities in pre-modern Iceland” Stuart Morrison, University of Stirling

“Tails and Tales: Fish in Old English Literature and Anglo-Saxon Culture” Todd Preston, Lycoming College

“Hunting around the Padule. Socio-economic, environmental, and legislative considerations on an Italian wetland area from ca. 1300 to 1600” Cristina Arrigoni Martelli, York University

III. Hopes and Hazards of Agropastoralism

Presider: Vicki Szabo, Western Carolina University

“The Contours of an Early Medieval Livestock Pestilence” Tim Newfield, McGill University

“Moving Sheep Through Molise: Medieval Transhumance as a Shaper of the Medieval Environment in Central Adriatic Italy” Kathy Pearson, Old Dominion University

“Soil Concepts and Soil Amendments in Late Medieval Agricultural Literature”  Verena Winiwarter, Alpen Adria University, Klagenfurt

IV. Practical Aspects of Resource Use and Management

Presider: Kathy Pearson, Old Dominion University

“Looking for Watermills, Finding Windmills as Well” Constance Berman, University of Iowa

“Top Down or Bottom Up? Waste Disposal Concerns in Sixteenth-Century Nottingham” Dolly Jørgensen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

“Six Broadleaves and a Chimney: Vernacular Structures and Managing Timber Resources in Medieval Scotland” Alasdair Ross, Stirling University

V. Understanding Landscapes on Medieval Frontiers

Presider: Richard Hoffmann, York University

“Wise or Foolish Virgins? Monastic Estates and Environmental Change in Northern Europe c.1100 to c.1250” Richard Oram, Stirling University

“From desertum to silva. Perceptions of the Woodland in Thirteenth-Century Silesian Charters” Sébastien Rossignol, York University

“Black Sea Coastal Environments According to Medieval Navigational Tools” Elisaveta Todorova, University of Cincinnati

Tim Newfield (tim.newfield@mail.mcgill.ca) is considering putting together a panel on medieval food shortages for the 2010 International Rural History Conference. Email Tim if you are interested.

Landscapes and Societies in Ancient and Medieval Europe East of the Elbe

Interactions between Environmental Settings and Cultural Transformations

Fourth International Workshop of the Interdisciplinary Association “Gentes trans Albiam – Europe East of the Elbe in the Middle Ages”

Keele Campus of York University, Toronto, 26-27 March 2010

Medieval Europe east of the Elbe presents an interesting field for the investigation of landscape transformations. The area is characterized by many features that clearly distinguishes it from the Mediterranean regions throughout the Middle Ages – absence of Roman traditions, late appearance of Latin culture, colonization movement, chartered towns.

The workshop will bring together a small group of young scholars (16 papers) from North America and Europe working in the fields of archaeology, history, palaeobotany and palaeozoology. Papers in the fields of history, archaeology and related disciplines are invited. The papers should present a link with parts of Europe outside the borders of the Roman Empire as well as with environmental and/or social history. The main focus will be on the medieval period but papers dealing with Antiquity are invited too. Doctoral students and young scholars will be particularly considered. Invitations will depend upon available funding. A publication following the workshop is considered.

Please send a short abstract (less than one page) and a CV by email to one of the organizers by 20 October 2009:

Sunhild Kleingärtner (skleingaertner@ufg.uni-kiel.de)

Sébastien Rossignol (rossigno@yorku.ca)

Donat Wehner (donatwehner@gshdl.uni-kiel.de)

For more information about the research group, see the website of “Gentes trans Albiam – Europe East of the Elbe in the Middle Ages“

Make plans now to attend the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 13-16, 2010.

Ellen Arnold (earnold@macalester.edu) has organized three regular paper sessions and one roundtable on medieval environmental history for the 2010 meeting. For those of you participating in the sessions, note that your participant form and abstract must be submitted to Ellen before September 15, 2009. The form is available online.

There will be many sessions with papers on medieval history at the 1st World Congress of Environmental History in Copenhagen, Denmark, 4-8 August 2009. Look for these in your program:

Session 2.5, Mapping global agricultural history 2: Global agricultural systems in Eurasia 1000-1500, Janken Myrdal

Session 2.6, Man’s role in changing the face of a river: (1) From peat river to international trade route. The “birth” of the Western Scheldt estuary as seen from a social-ecological perspective (Belgium-The Netherlands, 12th-16th centuries), Tim Soens; (2) Storm Flooding, Economy and Environment: The Experience of the Tidal Thames 1250-1550, James Galloway

Session 2.7, Climate histories: Connecting Arabic and European medieval documentary data for reconstructing climate, Ruediger Glaser

Session 3.11, Using and abusing wild animals: Cultural Behavior and Animals’ Life: The Relationship between the Tribute and Asiatic Lions’ Crisis (1400-1600), Lei Kang

Session 4.7, Grape & grain: (1) Climatic variations in the Low Countries during the fifteenth century and their impact on economy and society, Chantal Camenisch; (2)The beginning of the grain harvest as a proxy for early summer temperatures, Norfolk c. 1270 AD – 1430 AD, Kathleen Pribyl

Session 4.8, Water management & land use: (1) Historic Ponds in Rural Southern Burgundy: Water management from the Medieval Period through the Present Day, Elizabeth Jones, Scott Madry and Dennis McDaniel; (2) A Multi-Proxy Reconstruction of Environmental and Land Use Changes from Medieval Aged Reservoir and Mill Pond Sediments, Southern Burgundy; Tamara Misner, Marie-Jose Gaillard-Lemdahl, Michael Rosenmeier and Eric Straffin

Session 4.9, In theft and law, life and death: (1) De mortibus animalium: livestock pestilence in Carolingian Europe, c. 750-950 CE, Tim Newfield; (2) Pig Husbandry in Late-Medieval England (1250-1400), Philip Slavin; (3) The Fish of the Sea in Late Medieval law,Tim Sistrunk; (4) Hunting birds to eat in Italy, thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, Cristina Arrigoni Martelli

Session 6.7, Reconstruction of the European climate in the past millennium: (1) Seasonal climate variability and famines in Medieval Europe (1200 to 1499), Christian Pfister; (2) European climate of the past millennium: potential of historical climatology for its understandingand reconstruction, Rudolf Brázdil

Session 7.2, Perspectives on early modern resources: Human effects on landscapes of Bialowieza Primeval Forest in the 14th-18th centuries; Tomasz Samojlik

Session 7.6, The study of modern and pre-modern rivers: Towards a methodology for the study of pre-modern rivers, Robert Babcock

Session 7.12, Eminent domain, sustainability & resistance: (1) Colonized Environments, Rural Resistance, and Moral Ecology in post-Conquest England and Late Medieval Orkney and Shetland, Vicki Szabo; (2) The Roots of Eminent Domain in Natural Resources: Under and Over the Ground in Medieval France, Richard Keyser; (3) Regalian rights in woods as a resource for mining in medieval Serbia, Jelena Mrgic

Session 8.4, Environmental risk & insurance: (1) Managing environmental risks. Society and floods in the Upper Rhine Valley and Tuscany in the Renaissance (ca. 1270-1560), Gerrit Jasper Schenk; (2) Risk Management and Disaster Prevention in the Late Middle Ages. Facing floods in 13th to 16th century Central Europe, Christian Rohr

Session 8.6, Histories of food & the environment: Small is tasteful. Consumption patterns of eel in Northwestern Europe, 1300-1800, Petra J.E.M. van Dam

Session 8.11, Source & resources: (1) Monastic responses to the theft of natural resources in medieval Germany, Ellen Arnold; (2) Is shipbuilding to blame for? Issues for reconstructing local factors affecting the history of medieval Mediterranean forests, Constantin Canavas

Session 9.6 Forests and Energy in northern and central Europe 1400-1850: (1) Woodland Exploitation in Central Europe 1400–1800: Changes vs. Stability, Péter Szabó and Radim Hédl; (2) Holland’s energy economy c. 1400-c. 1600, Charles Cornelisse; (3) Wood and wood products in the English economy, c.1550-1750, Paul Warde

Also look for the following posters:

Beer and Hops in late medieval and early modern Denmark, Stefan Pajung

How extreme where the Floods of River Rhine in the pre-instrumental Period? A novel interdisciplinary approach for reconstructing and quantifying pre-instrumental floods, Oliver Wetter