Pre-modern history maintains a terrestrial bias. It is often preoccupied with events unfolding on land, saying little about what happened within Earth’s aquatic ecosystems. This terrestrial bias reflects the dearth of historical sources on life under water before the rise of oceanic sciences in the twentieth century. In this workshop, Professor Jack Bouchard will explain how environmental historians are gradually ameliorating the problem. Piecing together the fragments of textual and natural archival sources, he puts forward new interdisciplinary methods to span the terrestrial/aquatic divide and to unveil the mysteries of life below water since the sixteenth century, a world to which most early modern writers were largely oblivious.

Registration is required for this workshop. Email Faisal Husain at fhh102@psu.edu to register.