Andrew Watson
As a social and political thought, as a lot a cloth and socioeconomic actuality, Canada is a toddler of the Anthropocene. If the Earth has shifted from the Holocene into a brand new epoch of planetary historical past, then Canada has served as an incubator for its defining ideas, a laboratory for the experiments that gave it type, and floor zero for witnessing its penalties.[1]
So what would a framework for Canadian environmental historical past seem like if students attended to the nation’s position in, and contributions to, the speedy socioeconomic and Earth system tendencies which have come to outline the human imprint on the planet, that are broadly known as the Nice Acceleration?[2]
The Nice Acceleration refers back to the interval after WWII when the tempo and scale of socioecological modifications departed dramatically from earlier trajectories. This reconnaissance of Canadian environmental historical past would want to judge the patterns of adjusting social relations, financial exercise, and environmental transformation in Canada since 1867, which characterised the fabric precursors to the important thing indicators of the Nice Acceleration after 1950. It will additionally want to increase the scope of study backwards to look at the concepts and ideologies that knowledgeable anthropocentric relations with the non-human world nicely earlier than the mid-twentieth century, together with imperialism, colonialism, liberalism, and capitalism.[3]
With the formidable mission of creating a brand new framework for Canadian environmental historical past in thoughts, NiCHE invitations contributions to a weblog collection on Canada’s Nice Acceleration.
Contributions could embrace, however will not be restricted to:
- New analysis in Canadian environmental historical past that engages with the idea of the Nice Acceleration,
- Reassessments, reframings, synthesis work, or revisionist interpretations of current Canadian environmental historical past with the framework of the Nice Acceleration,
- Efforts at crafting a periodization of Canadian environmental historical past throughout the phrases of reference of the Nice Acceleration,
- Methodological approaches to finding out Canadian environmental historical past that draw from, or mirror the significance, of key indicators of the Nice Acceleration,
- Novel approaches or instruments that make it doable to synthesize varied subfields of Canadian environmental historical past in methods which can be knowledgeable by the idea of the Nice Acceleration,
- Critiques or options to the framework of the Nice Acceleration as a method of understanding Canadian environmental historical past,
- Different concepts that may assist students undertake a reconnaissance of Canadian environmental historical past within the 21st century.
Contributions ought to be between 800-1200 phrases and will embrace photos and different multi-media. Students from all levels of their profession (college students, postdocs, early profession, professors, and many others) are inspired to contribute. Anybody thinking about contributing to this collection ought to contact Andrew Watson by electronic mail (a.watson [@] usask.ca) by February 18 with a brief 200-word expression of curiosity.
Accepted contributions might be due in early April 2026, and ultimate posts within the collection might be printed on the NiCHE web site in Could and June 2026.
[1] Alan MacEachern, “Canada’s Anthropocene: A Roundtable.” The Otter. January 24, 2018; Sean Kheraj, “Culpability and Canada’s Anthropocene: A Response.” The Otter. January 29, 2018; F.M. McCarthy, et al., ”The Varved Succession of Crawford Lake, Milton, Ontario, Canada as a Candidate World Boundary Stratotype Part and Level for the Anthropocene Collection.” The Anthropocene Evaluate, 10,1 (2023): 146-176.
[2] J.R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, The Nice Acceleration: An Environmental Historical past of the Anthropocene since 1945. Havard College Press, 2014; Will Steffen, et al., “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Nice Acceleration.” The Anthropocene Evaluate, 2,1 (2015): 81-98.
[3] Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Local weather of Historical past: 4 Theses.” Essential Inquiry, 35,2 (2009): 197-222; Jason W. Moore, ed., Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, Historical past, and the Disaster of Capitalism. PM Press, 2016; Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, “On the Significance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” ACME: An Worldwide Journal for Essential Geographies, 16,4 (2017): 761-780.
Function Picture: Photograph by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
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