Losing an Archive

Doing Place-Based History in the Age of the Anthropocene

Bibliographic Data

ID5740919
AuthorsCatherine Tatiana Dunlop (corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume126
Issue3
Pages1143-1153
Publication date2021-11-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ahr/rhab354
OpenAlexW3214711047
LanguageEN
Citations received2

How will climate change affect place-based historical research? In this personal essay, author Catherine Dunlop reflects on her experience of researching historical attitudes toward France's mistral wind while simultaneously feeling the wind's powerful gusts firsthand. Unsatisfied with the French state's indoor weather archives, Dunlop develops her research project around the outdoor archives that she encounters on a daily basis. Through her sensory experiences of the mistral, both at sea and on land, Dunlop hones her research questions and ultimately deepens her understanding of the mistral's role in modern French history. Even as she acknowledges the benefits that came from her firsthand encounters with the mistral, Dunlop recognizes the fragile and tenuous aspects of place-based historical research. Places like Provence, and their distinctive winds, are changing. The Anthropocene, she argues, will alter historians' ability to connect with and learn from the landscape heritage of the places that they visit. Losing our outdoor archives to climate change will impact historical research in ways that we are just beginning to realize

Aesthetics · Anthropocene · Archaeology · Art · Climate change · Environmental ethics · Feeling · State (computer science) · Computer Science · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Oceanography · Psychology

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