D.A., Carnegie-Mellon University, 1969
U.S. Environmental History, Global Environmental History and Public Policy
| 213 Meserve | T: (617)373-4439 | E: a.penna@neu.edu |
In recent years I have been teaching and conducting research in the field of global environmental history, a relatively new area of historical inquiry and one which complements our department's Ph.D. program in world history. Presently, I teach a graduate course titled "Global Environmental History" and another that focuses on North America. My current research involves the writing of a book length manuscript on global environmental history. Tentatively titled “The Human Revolution: Global Environmental Change in Historical Perspective,” the manuscript begins by exploring the effects of early geological changes on the Earth's climate. The chapters that follow examine the transition from hunter gathering to the origins of agriculture and the effects of climate and disease on population growth. Chapters on urbanization, manufacturing, industrialization, consumption, energy use in historical perspective and a concluding chapter on the current condition of the global climate and its potential environmental effects.
Why write a global environmental narrative? Global environmental history is linked directly to the resurgence of the field of world history and the re-writing of human history from the perspective of all or most of the world's people. William McNeill, unquestionably one of the eminent historians in the last half century, and the author of much of the best work on European and world history, made the case for world history in his lecture titled: "A Short History of Humanity," at the World 2000 conference in Austin, TX, in March, 2000. There, he stated: "... surely it is time for the historical profession to broaden its inherited aspiration to achieve 'scientific' history...by fitting the human career on earth into the cosmic, biological, and social context."
The sub-field of world environmental history is also growing and meeting the challenge to include recent research on the impact of climate on natural and human history, the migration of early humans, the development of agriculture, the initially slow but later faster growing population of the Earth. Regardless of region, every human population has experienced the impact of environmental change on its development. In some cases, human intervention brought about changes in the surrounding ecosystems. In other equally dramatic and sometimes subtle ways, the volatility of the Earth forced humans to advance or to retreat depending on the degree of the changes in the form of volcanic eruptions or the slow advance of the ice.
A second major project involves editing a volume of papers given in May 2006 at the Massachusetts Historical Society on Boston’s environmental history. An outgrowth of the Society’s annual seminar series on the city’s environmental history, the conference titled, Remaking Boston, may become the title of the volume co-edited by Conrad Wright and me and due for publication in 2008.
In recent years, I’ve published essays on "Climate Change," The Great Hurricane of 1938," "The Mississippi Flood of 1927," and the "Hurricane of 1935." A future book length project will focus on the environmental effects of natural disasters.