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 |
I'm writing a book length manuscript with Professor Jennifer Cole, the Director of the University's Environmental Studies Program, on the local, regional and global impacts of natural disasters. These include super-volcanoes, earthquakes, pandemics, floods, fires, hurricanes, cyclones and others. Our goal is a big history with a significant environmental historical and scientific orientation. By big history, we mean a manuscript that transcends more parochial local and national histories bounded by space and time. For example, the eruption of the super-volcano, Mt. Toba, on the island of Sumatra 74,000 years BP, the largest eruption during the Quaternary had arguably devastating effects on the human population bringing to the brink of extinction and creating the bottleneck found in the human genome. So, Professor Cole and I are focused on the ways in which natural historical catastrophes alter, shape, and in some cases transform human history on local, regional and global scales.