Atlantic environmental history has become an established subfield among scholars of the Atlantic world to highlight the overlaps between the distinct fields of Atlantic history and environmental history. Atlantic environmental history recognizes the limited geographical representation of the landmasses, environments, and nonhuman agents which comprise the Atlantic world. This subfield takes seriously the argument that the practice of Atlantic history itself is an endeavor of advancing knowledge of the environment as Atlantic history scholarship utilizes the Atlantic Ocean as its main functional unit of analysis. In this way, centering oceans, seas, diseases, climate, crops, landscapes, architecture, cosmologies, forests, animals, rivers, and commodities, for instance, contribute to the project of studying the Atlantic in a ‘Braudelian’ fashion. Indeed, if Africa is yet to be fully integrated into the capacious Atlantic, so is the continent’s diverse environments and how they impacted the Atlantic exchanges of the early modern period.
The panel seeks to present a forum for deliberations about how Africa’s environmental setting shaped the continent’s ‘long’ Atlantic era. I am inviting Africanist scholars at different stages of their career who study the ‘Atlantic’ through the lenses of the African environment—environment broadly understood—to submit paper abstracts for consideration. You are welcome to be as ambitious as you can with regards to your use of methods and your conceptualization of what the environment means to your work.
Please send your abstracts of not more than 250 words to ina11@georgetown.edu by March 7. All questions concerning this panel can also be directed to the same email.
