Workshop: Collaborative Research: The Great Plains: An Environmental History

University Of Missouri-Kansas City, Columbia MO

Investigators

Abstract

The proposal will fund a four-day interdisciplinary workshop on "The Great Plains: An Environmental History." The University of Oklahoma will host the workshop in May 2017. This interdisciplinary workshop will explore the environmental history of the North American Great Plains from western Texas to southern Canada. This workshop will enhance interdisciplinary dialogue in environmental studies. It will expand academic knowledge of the Great Plains. The workshop will be free and open to the public. It will be podcast and tweeted live. The published book will inform contemporary policy debates on the environment. It will explain why certain technologies succeed and others fail in regards to human habitation and resource management. It will provide an opportunity to members of the public to consider the Great Plains as a complex ecosystem that includes human interactions from a historical perspective. This interdisciplinary workshop will offer a scholars the opportunity to re-conceptualize the Great Plains from the perspective of technological adaptations rather than only ecological disasters. By exploring the elemental and persistent themes of water, grasses, animals, and energy, the workshop will discuss the complex ways in which shifting technologies sustained human life, advanced diverse societies, and altered human relations with the region's myriad ecologies. The workshop will integrate the perspectives and research methodologies of different fields to forge an analysis of the Great Plains at the intersection of environment, culture, and technology. The workshop will involve scholars from environmental history, energy history, anthropology, geography, sociology, Native American studies, and environmental science, policy and management.