The Great Epizootic of 1872–73: Networks of Animal Disease in North American Urban Environments

This article examines the outbreak of an unknown illness (later thought to be equine influenza) among the horses of Toronto and its subsequent spread as a continent-wide panzootic. Known as the Great Epizootic, the illness infected horses in nearly every major urban center in Canada and the United States over a 50-week period beginning in late September 1872. The Great Epizootic not only illustrated the centrality of horses to the functioning of nineteenth-century North American cities, but it also demonstrated that these cities generated ecological conditions and a networked disease pool capable of supporting the rapid spread of animal disease on a continental scale in localities from widely divergent geographies. This article invites environmental historians to broaden their view of cities to consider the ways in which networked urbanization produced forms of historical biotic homogenization that could result in the rapid and widespread outbreak of disease

News from Affiliated Committees/ Nouvelles des Comités associés

We are looking forward to seeing all interested in digital history at the business meeting in Regina. Please attend, especially if you are interested in being part of the committee as chair or co-chair. Since we last met in Toronto, we have been maintaining the CCDH Facebook page. We are still looking to grow this network and encourage others looking for curating experience to consider volunteering to help manage the page and a Twitter account. There will be a co-sponsored Canadian Committee for Digital History (CHA) and Canadian Society for Digital Humanities Panel at Congress. This panel was also successful in obtaining financial support from the Federation for this session. As part of the committee’s ongoing efforts to undertake a small conference to support digital skills development, we will be working on a SSHRC Insight grant in March

Nature's Past Episode 026: Environmental History as Public History

Environmental historians have recently been thinking about future directions for their sub-discipline. Last year, the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society co-sponsored a workshop held in Washington, D.C. to explore such future directions and published some of the findings here. Canadian environmental historians gathered in Burlington, Ontario last spring to ponder similar matters at EH Plus. At both meetings, participants discussed the many roles that environmental history plays outside of the academic community. It seems clear that environmental historians want their research to reach broader public audiences. On this month’s episode of the podcast, we consider the role of environmental history outside of academia, as public history. To explore this topic and some of its challenges for the field, I spoke with a group of environmental historians with experience working in public history settings. Guests

Nature's Past Episode 051: Has Environmental History Lost Its Way?

Late last year in December, Lisa Brady, the editor of the journal, Environmental History, posted a provocatively titled blog article, “Has Environmental History Lost Its Way?” In that article, she reviews a round table panel from the most recent annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in which Mark Hersey, a historian from Mississippi State University challenged the audience to consider whether or not environmental history has broadened too widely in its scope and drifted from its methodological roots. Two years earlier, Liza Piper, a Canadian environmental historian from University of Alberta, wrote a similarly provocative article in History Compass in which she argues “that Canadian environmental historians, even as they foreground nature as an historical actor, nevertheless continue to focus their attention and orient their investigations around questions of how human social, cultural, economic, and political power reshaped both nature and human experience in the past.” These arguments garnered lots of attention online as environmental historians shared the link to Brady’s article via online social networks and discussed its arguments. Others have now written response articles attempting to answer her question. The discussion has focused on the question of whether environmental history should emphasize materialism and the use of environment as an analytical lens or proceed as a “big tent” that incorporates a wide range of scholarship regardless of methodology. On this episode of the podcast, Lisa Brady, Mark Hersey, and Liza Piper discuss this question and further explore whether or not environmental history has lost its way

Nature's Past Episode 010: Digital Technologies and Environmental History

How have online digital technologies changed environmental history research, communication, and teaching? This episode of the podcast explores this question in the context of the recent NiCHE Digital Infrastructure API Workshop held in Mississauga, Ontario. Online-based Application Programming Interfaces or APIs are just one digital technology that holds the potential to change the way environmental historians access resources, analyze historical data, and communicate research findings. Within the past decade alone, the development of online digital technologies has offered the potential to transform historical scholarship. This episode includes a round-table conversation with some leading figures in the realm of digital history as well as an interview with Jan Oosthoek, the producer and host of the Exploring Environmental History podcast.How have online digital technologies changed environmental history research, communication, and teaching? This episode of the podcast explores this question in the context of the recent NiCHE Digital Infrastructure API Workshop held in Mississauga, Ontario. Online-based Application Programming Interfaces or APIs are just one digital technology that holds the potential to change the way environmental historians access resources, analyze historical data, and communicate research findings. Within the past decade alone, the development of online digital technologies has offered the potential to transform historical scholarship. This episode includes a round-table conversation with some leading figures in the realm of digital history as well as an interview with Jan Oosthoek, the producer and host of the Exploring Environmental History podcast

Nature's Past Episode 014: Management of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse

North American environmental history is punctuated by notorious episodes of species extinctions, most notably the cases of the passenger pigeon and the bison. In both cases, humans exhausted what they believed were unlimited resources in the absence of any scientific management or regulations. The collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery in the 1990s stands out from these previous events because of the industry’s dependence on scientific management. This month, we speak with Professor Dean Bavington from Nipissing University about his research and the publication of his new book Managed Annihilation: An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse.North American environmental history is punctuated by notorious episodes of species extinctions, most notably the cases of the passenger pigeon and the bison. In both cases, humans exhausted what they believed were unlimited resources in the absence of any scientific management or regulations. The collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery in the 1990s stands out from these previous events because of the industry’s dependence on scientific management. This month, we speak with Professor Dean Bavington from Nipissing University about his research and the publication of his new book Managed Annihilation: An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse