[Sasnet] Conference on disease and environment

[Wells, Christian]

C A L L    F O R    P A P E R S

Disease in Global Environmental History 

Workshop organized by the 
Department of History, York University 

March 9-10, 2007 

Concerns about disease and public health have been mounting in recent
years in scholarship and in popular culture, especially in the guise of
public health scares. In 2000 the Toronto Medical Board of Health
estimated that 1000-1500 people per year were dying prematurely in
Toronto from smog, while the average of premature deaths due to smog in
other North American cities was only 700. The 2003 SARS crisis in
Toronto, which totaled 140 cases and 13 deaths, and led to the World
Health Organization recommending against travel to Toronto, has been
dramatized in a CTV movie "Plague City." In August 2006 Toronto hosted
the World AIDS Organization's 16th international conference that drew
thousands of international researchers, politicians and activists.
Despite the advances in treatment and the ongoing crisis in Africa, the
biggest news was the absence of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Clearly the Canadian media and the conference attendees believed the
conference warranted the attention of the hosting country's head of
state. While these recent health scares and scandals are compelling to
the general public and researchers alike, they are not new, but have
been affecting human societies since the beginning of time. Historians
can help activists, researchers and the public understand disease in
broad chronological, environmental and global perspective. 

Studies of disease in the past, environmental history, and globalization
have been exploding in recent years.  Disease has been examined as a
transformative historical process that destabilizes societies and cause
major population shifts through movements and deaths. Researchers in
environmental history have connected such historic scourges as the Black
Death and malaria to human and natural alterations of environmental
conditions. Pathogenic disease is part of the natural world and is
engaged in co-evolution with human beings.   In historical time human
cultural changes, such as agriculture, travel, pastoralism,
state-building, urbanization, and colonialism, have changed the living
conditions for microorganisms and their non-human hosts and vectors.
Human individuals and communities have repeatedly been exposed to new
diseases and to old ones with altered attributes or newly-expanded
ranges.  Other disease conditions, such as Minamata disease, many
cancers, and beri-beri, result from physical or chemical qualities in
the environment, often caused or altered by human actions.
Environmental history explores this two-way relationship of humans and
nature at the smallest scale of microbes and molecules as well as the
largest scale of global climatic change and human migration.
Globalization has encouraged scholars to look past political and
geographic boundaries to see how these historical patterns can operate
on large scales.

We wish to draw these frameworks together in a two-day workshop to study
the relationships among diseases, human societies, and environments by
focusing on three specific areas: 1. the preconditions and consequences
of epidemic and endemic disease in historical context; 2. the roles
played by migration of pathogens, vectors and people; and 3. new
diseases in the globalizing world. The three themes will be explored
through keynote speakers, paper panels, two commentators for each theme,
and general discussion. We are looking for three 20-minute presentations
to accompany each of the keynote speakers and commentators.
Presentations should address the theme but they need not restrict
themselves to the topic, area, or time period of the keynote speaker.

The first theme, "Epidemic and Endemic Disease in Historical Context:
Preconditions and Consequences," will feature Walter Scheidel, Professor
of Classics and Director of Graduate Studies at Stanford University. His
research focuses on ancient social and economic history, with particular
emphasis on historical demography, slavery, and agrarian history. He
will speak on the endemic and epidemic disease issue, centred in the
ancient world and allowing necessary consideration of mobility,
imperialism, etc. 

The second theme, "On the Move: Pathogens, Vectors, and Peoples," will
feature John R. McNeill, Professor of History, Director of Graduate
Studies, and Cinco Hermanos Chair of Environmental and International
Affairs at Georgetown University. He will speak on his long-standing
yellow fever project based in the 17th to the 20th centuries, involving
human movements and the role of empires and colonialism, as well as
insect vectors and the environmental conditions.  

The third theme, "New Diseases in the Globalizing World," will feature
Associate Professor Mary-Ellen Kelm, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous
Peoples of North America at Simon Fraser University. She will discuss
globalization, racialization and the multiple discourses of HIV/AIDS in
urban Aboriginal communities in Canada.

Submissions for papers to fit into any of the three themes are due
November 15, 2006. Please send one-page proposals and one-page vitas to
Carolyn Podruchny, History Department, York University, 2140 Vari Hall,
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 or send them by email to
carolynp at yorku.ca.