For our first session of the year, we will revisit the special focus section of Isis from 2005 on the Generalist Vision in the History of Science (vol. 96, no. 2, pp. 224-251), in order to open up a discussion of how well the contributors' call for scholarly work that speaks to a wider audience has been realized during the past 16 years, in the history of earth and environmental sciences. Participants should (re)read the introduction to the focus section by Rob Kohler, and are encouraged to (re)read the other three thought provoking and stimulating essays too, which are all relatively brief, by Paula Findlen, Steve Shapin, and David Kaiser. Each participant will then be invited to introduce themselves, and each attendee will be encouraged to highlight a work (article, book, etc.) by some other scholar in the history of the earth and environmental sciences during the past 16 years, which serves as a successful example of speaking to a wider (scholarly and/or public) audience beyond niche specialists. We will then use this opening discussion as a springboard for spending the rest of the year discussing the problem of how historians of earth and environmental sciences can address not only wider audiences within the scholarly community but also contribute to public engagement around pressing environmental crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
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