Making Tracks: Introduction
Welcome to “Making Tracks,” one of the longest running series on Seeing the Woods. This project developed around the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) Conference 2013.
The Rachel Carson Center invited all former and current fellows to attend the conference. In return, the fellows provided short essays explaining how they had come to work on environmental humanities issues.
We were delighted with the results. Scholars from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds described their upbringings, studies, and careers, as well as the chance encounters and twists of fate that led them to environmental studies and to the Rachel Carson Center.
Their essays demonstrate the diversity of the Rachel Carson Center and offer more general reflections on environmental scholarship. Some of the pieces were published in a volume of our RCC Perspectives journal entitled “Making Tracks: Human and Environmental Histories.” Due to limited space, we were not able to include all of the essays. We therefore decided to post both the essays from the journal volume and the unpublished essays on our blog, as an ongoing record of journeys leading to the Rachel Carson Center.
Full of humor and insight, these posts provide a unique glimpse into the development of environmental awareness, the development of environmental studies, and the ways in which our connections to people and places shape our lives. We hope you enjoy them!
seeingthewoods.org 