The global pandemic of COVID-19 has trapped many people sheltering “in-place.” Simultaneously, more human activity than ever before is transpiring place-lessly over the internet, in cyber rooms, and digital spaces. These contradictory trends only exacerbate a conundrum common to young scholars in environmental history: the personal/intellectual drive to be rooted in the past and place, versus the economic imperatives to be migratory and mutable. While there are many structural issues that need to be addressed, this session will break some of the tacit silence on a series of problems that drive many scholars, especially those from underrepresented groups, from careers in the academy. How can academia be more inclusive? How can intellectual communities be crafted between heterogeneous individuals, across global distances, and despite economic precarity?
The session features scholars who have written about the importance of community, connection, and belonging for Environmental History Now, an online platform that showcases the environmental-related work and expertise of graduate students and early career scholars who identify as women, trans and non-binary people. While its ongoing “Problems of Place” blog series explores these questions in text, this virtual session seeks to create a metaphoric place for these conversations to happen live and dynamically, despite spatial distance.