Jeremy is an Associate Professor of History in the Department of History and Classics (PhD, Johns Hopkins, 2007). He is a member of the Office of Sustainability Academic Affairs Committee and one of the Arts Faculty representatives on the Program Committee for the BA in Environmental Studies. www.jeremycaradonna.com.
As a professional historian, my research deals with two areas of focus.
The first area is early modern European history, with an emphasis on the cultural and intellectual history of Enlightenment France. My first book, The Enlightenment in Practice, appeared in 2012 with Cornell University Press. It broadens our understanding of the nature and impact of the European Enlightenment via an analysis of public involvement in intellectual life and the use of ‘crowd-sourcing’ by the French state. It is based on archival research that I conducted in about 30 French towns. To date, I have written and published on the following subjects: participation in the European Enlightenment, the political culture of Old Regime and Revolutionary France, the history of suicide, the history of deforestation, the so-called Counter-Enlightenment, and the concept of public opinion in European history.
The second area is the history and practice of sustainability. In recent years I have shifted the main focus of my research toward the history of sustainability (the concept and the movement). In 2012, I published an article on changing attitudes toward deforestation in Europe. In the past couple of years I have also organized new courses on sustainability and environmental consciousness. I am interested in where the concept of sustainability comes from, how the sustainability movement took shape, and the impact that it has had on our society since the late 1970s. Sustainability is a meaningful way for me to come to terms with some of the more problematic developments that the planet has witnessed since the 18th century: growth-based economics, overpopulation, industrialism, deforestation, anthropogenic climate change, ecological destruction, and so on. Sustainability, as far as I’m concerned, represents a constructive response to the unsustainable world that we’ve created.
Currently, I am working on a history of sustainability that is geared toward a broad public audience. It is tentatively titled A Short History of Sustainability and will address the central ideas, thinkers, writings, and institutions that have helped form the sustainability movement of the present day. An explicit sustainability movement took shape around 1980, but in a sense, sustainability had been “in the making” since about the year 1700, which is where the book begins. The movement might be of recent origin but the concepts that inform it go back a long way. The book also considers the challenges of sustainability in the future. It will be one of the first of its kind.
The history of sustainability is a growing field and I am excited to be a part of establishing it as its own historical discipline. It borrows from environmental history, social & cultural history, intellectual history, and economic history, but it is its own academic entity.
As a researcher, citizen, and educator, I believe that active participation in public venues of intellectual and critical exchange is crucial to the well-being of a functional democracy. I strongly support the idea of deliberative democracy–that is, the idea that progressive change and a well-informed citizenry requires places (physical or digital) in which to exchange ideas and voice opinions. Moreover, I believe that cultural and environmental issues must be approached from an historical perspective; understanding how we’ve gotten to where we are today helps us figure out the challenges of the present and our vision of the future.