The aim of our workshop and issue will be to look at American history and politics through an environmental lens and reframe Washington’s upward trajectory as a world power in the context of the Anthropocene. This means examining how US actions have induced environmental change and, equally important, how the landscape’s natural features and raw materials, in general, have influenced, if not determined, Americans’ choices at the local, national, and international levels. As environmental history is also the history of humankind and their political relationships, the issue will aim at understanding how the United States and its inhabitants have impacted and been impacted by the global environment.

We welcome papers that offer multidisciplinary and cross-cutting research examining the relationship between the US and the global environment. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

– Settler colonialism, land management, industrial growth, domestic and working conditions;
– Early and modern environmentalism, conservationism and preservationism;
– The environment and US militarism, war, and empire;
– Extractive and exploitative practices, petromodernity/petroleum culture;
– Nuclear America and the environment;
– Environmental science and technology and US power;
– US political economy, capitalism and commodification of the environment and its resources;
– Environmental law and the institutionalization of environmental regulations and policies, both at home and abroad (domestic and international regimes of environmental protection);
– Water management, sanitation, and waste/discard studies;
– Pollution and environmental health;
– US political ecology, the Anthropocene, and the Plantationocene;
– Climate change and migrations from, to and within the United States;
– Social and labor movements and environmental issues, environmental justice, indigenous environmental movements, ecofeminism and queer sustainability;
– The environment and US regional identities (US West, South, Appalachia, Great Plains, etc.);
– The evolution of American idea(s) of the environment;
– History of environmental movements and their relationship with the government;
– The securitization of climate change and environmental issues, also in reference to NATO’s role in this process.

Proposals must be sent by December 11, 2022, at usabroad@unibo.it. Please include a 300-word presentation of the paper (specifying the title, subject, originality, method, and sources) and a short CV (one page maximum). Selected papers will be announced by January 22, 2023. For full details on submission procedures and details on the event, please visit: https://usabroad.unibo.it/index