Agricultural History Society, 2022 Annual Meeting
Greening the Field(s)
Stavanger, Norway
Aug. 4-6, 2022
The Agricultural History Society is pleased to issue a call for submissions for its 2022 Annual Meeting in beautiful Stavanger, Norway. This is the society’s first meeting in Europe.
This year’s conference aims to explore what it might mean to ‘green’ agriculture and agricultural history. We seek to explore production and impacts from farm to fork, recognising the emergence of synergies in the content and practices of environmental history and agricultural history, especially when assessing ethical and popular responses to production and products, policy debates on the potential of green transitions in future farming, and the societal impacts of changing land uses. The theme captures questions linked to sustainable food production in periods of environmental and climate change, crisis, and attempts to create and live new agricultures. It also captures the significance today of exploring past transitions, the connectivity between old and new agricultures, energy transitions, and the ghostly acres implicated in food production and cultivation. Within these things we might see the complexities of human experiences of change in the face of new farming systems, intersecting with issues of social justice, labour and migration, ‘race’, gender, (dis)ability, or the impacts on rural communities of new policies and practices such as rewilding. And, as we continue to live with Covid-19, what of the dynamic interrelationships between human and other animal populations, ‘wild’ and farmed, revealed historically as we seek food and extract value from cleared land? The committee seeks papers that explore experiences of change in the past, but also continuities in the practices of rural, indigenous, farm family, mobile, settled, colonized and colonizing, and enslaved populations seeking sustenance from old and new agricultures, landscapes and animal populations.
Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:
Environmental impacts of livestock production, from animal feed to waste production.
The history of the development of new foods/foodways – like hydroponics and new proteins (such as Quorn®, plant-based, soya, insect).
Health/Disease – interactions of humans and other animals, the welfare impacts of endemic disease, medical veterinary histories, ‘hygiene’, impacts from treatments (such as Anti-Microbial Resistance).
Agricultural/’Wild’ species and spaces – proximities of human and ‘wild’ animal populations when land is cleared for agricultural use, the concept of ‘one health’, disease reservoirs & histories of disease (Spanish flu, swine flu, bird flu, tuberculosis, etc.).
Social histories of the people who live and work with livestock in extensive and intensive systems – such as transhumance, pastoral systems, and herding.
The socio-economic changes falling out of shifts between livestock and arable, agri-tech, and new sustainable systems.
Environmental edges – the species that have co-evolved with farm animals’ grazing, the edges of arable, hedges, the wildflowers of grazed ‘wastelands’.
Climate impacts on agriculture – such as seasons, droughts, erasure, extreme weather events, and histories of modelling data and weather.
Political/policy histories – including legal limits on farming management, pesticide controls, animal transport, and disease controls.
Sustainable agricultural practices, both intensive and extensive, from backyard animals and prairies to community allotments and estates.
Products and byproducts – such as flour, oil, the fruit in the produce aisles, meat, dairy, eggs, leather, wool, bones, feathers, and tallow.
Reflecting the Society's inclusive tradition, we especially encourage contributions from emerging scholars and researchers covering understudied geographical regions or time periods. We also welcome significant contributions that do not directly address the conference theme.
The program committee also invites proposals that embrace the ongoing challenges associated with research, collaboration, and education amid COVID-19. Proposals for non-traditional conference presentations that model brevity, digital engagement, or conversation among participants despite the ongoing challenges are particularly welcomed.
Information on submission:
The Society takes a broad view of what constitutes agricultural and rural history. Topics from all locations and time periods are welcome.
The AHS is also flexible on format, and encourages proposals of various types, including traditional sessions with papers and commentary, thematic panel discussions, roundtables on recent books or films, workshops, topical conversations, and poster presentations. There will be a poster gallery at the conference site and a dedicated poster session to highlight the poster contributions. Detailed technical requirements for the posters will be sent to accepted poster presenters
The program committee prefers complete session proposals, but individual papers will also be considered.
The Society extends a special welcome to graduate students and has a competitive travel grant to assist students who are presenting papers at the conference.
Instructions:
Conventional session proposals should include the organizer’s contact information, a two-hundred-word abstract for each paper, and a one-page CV for each panel member.
Session proposals in other formats (roundtables, workshops, etc.) should include the organizer’s contact information, a two-to-three-hundred-word abstract, and a one-page CV for each participant.
Individual paper proposals should consist of contact information, a two-hundred-word abstract, and a one-page CV.
Poster proposals should include contact information, a two-hundred-word abstract, and a one-page CV.
All proposals should be submitted electronically in a single file in MS Word format to the Program Committee by email at: ahs2022conference@gmail.com
Deadline for submissions is November 6, 2021.
Questions may be addressed to Karen Sayer at K.Sayer@leedstrinity.ac.uk.
Program Committee Members: Karen Sayer, Leeds Trinity University (Chair); Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, Amherst College; David Marquis, William and Mary College; Kathi Nehls, Peru State College; Knut Oyangen, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences.
The conference will be sponsored and hosted by The Greenhouse Environmental Humanities program area of the University of Stavanger.