The Text that Nature Renders?

Abstract

Abstract: This Historical Perspectives surveys the state and prospect of the Canadian environmental history field, which studies the relations between people and nature through time. Four international scholars with deep knowledge of the Canadian literature and four homegrown practitioners discuss what has been distinct, best, and lacking in the work coming out of Canada so far this century. How have environmental historians engaged with broader literatures and how are they placed within them? What connections have been made – and missed? What contributions do the specific Canadian environmental and historical examples offer the broader field? And what does environmental history offer the broader Canadian history? The forum begins with three pairings that explore Canadian environmental history in relation to literatures with which it could expect to have an impact: Sverker Sörlin and Liza Piper consider Canada and the Circumpolar North, J.F.M. Clark and Graeme Wynn discuss Canada and the British Empire, and Nancy Langston and Sean Kheraj examine Canada and the United States. The Forum concludes with stand-alone perspectives by Stephen J. Pyne and Tina Loo on the place of, and for, Canadian environmental history in the world. As to be expected, the contributors vary widely in their diagnoses and prognoses: from claiming, for example, the evolution of a distinctive environmental politics in Canada to emphasizing sameness in Canadian and American treatment of the natural world. But, collectively, the essays suggest a vibrant field that implicitly critiques, and even rejects, many of the central tendencies of Canadian historical writing of the past generation. Sverker Sörlin, The Historiography of the Enigmatic North, http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.4.hp02 Liza Piper, Coming In from the Cold, http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.4.hp03 J.F.M. Clark, From the Other Side of the Ocean: Environment and Empire, http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.4.hp04 Graeme Wynn, Empires of Nature and the Nature of Empires, http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.4.hp05 Nancy Langston, Thinking like a Microbe: Borders and Environmental History, http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.4.hp06 Sean Kheraj, Borders, Intersections, and Ideas of Nature, http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.4.hp07 Stephen J. Pyne, Imagining Canada: Reflections in the Flames, http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.4.hp08 Tina Loo, Missed Connections: Why Canadian Environmental History Could Use More of the World, and Vice Versa, http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.95.4.hp09