Friday, 15 April 2016 — 12:00 noon — WAG 316

Brett Bennett, Univ. of Western Sydney and Univ. of Johannesburg

“Doing Interdisciplinary Environmental History: Opportunities and Challenges”

How can historians utilize disciplinary insights from the sciences and social sciences when writing environmental history? Brett’s talk will focus on two different models of interdisciplinary environmental history: collaborations with scientists and single-authored scholarship for historical and scientific audiences. There are many opportunities—larger audiences, policy impact, increased funding—associated with this type of history but there are challenges, particularly the danger of dilettantism and superficiality, possible career pitfalls, and disillusionment with history.

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Brett Bennett earned his PhD in History from UT in 2010 and is now a Senior Lecturer in History at Western Sydney University in Australia and a Senior Research Associate in History at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He is the author of Plantations and Protected Areas: A Global History of Forest Management (MIT Press, 2015) and, with Fred Kruger, of Forestry and Water Conservation in South Africa: History, Science and Policy (ANU Press, 2015). His ongoing research utilizes insights from the history of science, environmental history, and the sciences.

 

Friday, 8 April 2016 — 12:00 noon — WAG 316

Larry Laudan, UT

“Hyphenated HPS, 1965–1995: From the Glorious to the Grim”

Larry Laudan is a distinguished philosopher of science. He is the former
president of the American Philosophical Association—Pacific Division, and of
the International Peirce Society. He earned his PhD in the history and
philosophy of science at Princeton and has taught at Cambridge University,
University College London,  the University of Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, and
the University of Hawaii. After several years in Mexico, he is now a lecturer
in Law and Philosophy here at UT. He is the author of numerous books, including Progress and Its Problems (1977), Science and Hypothesis (1981), Science and Values (1984), and Truth, Error, and Criminal Law (2006). In recent years his work has focused on the epistemology of law.