About this issue
This issue of RCC Perspectives uses mountains as a common denominator around which to discuss overarching challenges of environmental history: challenges relating not only to mountain landscapes, but also to broader questions of sources, methods, cross-cultural research, project scale, and audience. Each author discusses some of their most intriguing discoveries, resulting in a brief and diverse collection of environmental history snapshots. At the same time, authors reflect on the process of doing environmental history, relating specific setbacks and opportunities they have faced. The volume thus offers a sort of handbook of advice and encouragement to other scholars. Portraying both a demanding project and a trove of fascinating results, this volume uses mountain landscapes to trigger wide-ranging reflections upon the pursuit of environmental history.
How to cite: Hall, Marcus, and Patrick Kupper (eds.), “Crossing Mountains: The Challenges of Doing Environmental History,” RCC Perspectives 2014, no. 4. doi.org/10.5282/rcc/6510.
Content
- Introduction by Patrick Kupper
- Challenges to Fieldwork before 1914 and Today: Adaptation, Omission, Rediscovery by Philippe Fôret
- The Challenge of Scale in Environmental History: A Small Meditation on a Large Matter by Emily Wakild
- Mountains beyond Mountains: Cross-Cultural Reflections on China by Mei Xueqin and Jon Mathieu
- Pursuing Environmental History on India’s Himalayas: Challenges and Rewards by Richard Tucker
- Africa’s Mountains: Collecting and Interpreting the Past by Chris Conte
- Conspicuous Elevations and the High Art of Posing the Right Question by Marcus Hall
