March is for Mountains
The Wirth Institute is pleased to invite you to two special free public events!
Mountain studies is an interdisciplinary field that delves into the unique ecological, cultural, and socio-economic dynamics of mountainous regions. It examines how human societies interact with mountain environments, addressing topics such as climate change, conservation, tourism, and traditional livelihoods. The field also explores the impact of mountains on regional identity, geopolitics, and local cultures.
Central Europe, with its rich alpine landscapes, provides an ideal context for these discussions. The mountain ranges in this region have long shaped the imaginations, histories, and identities of its people. By studying these areas through the lens of mountain studies, we gain a deeper understanding of how mountains influence local economies, traditions, and societal structures, while also uncovering the region’s environmental challenges and sustainable development efforts.
Friday, March 14th
12:00 p.m. MDT
Arts (Student) Lounge
Arts & Convocation Hall
Lunch & Learn
Mountain Battery: The Alps, Water, and Power in the Fossil Fuel Age
By the end of the nineteenth century, Europeans had come to see the Alps as the ideal place to fashion an alternative to the era's dominant energy source: coal. After 1850, Alpine water increasingly became "white coal": a power source with the revolutionary economic potential of fossil fuel. In this book, Marc Landry shows how dam-building in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries transformed the Alps into Europe's "battery"—an energy landscape designed to store and produce electricity for use throughout the Continent. These stores of energy played an important role in supplying the war economies of west-central Europe in both world wars as demand for munitions and other factory production necessitated access to electrical energy and the conservation of coal.
Through historical research conducted in archives across Europe—especially in Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, and Italy—Landry shows how and why Europeans thoroughly transformed the Alps in order to generate hydroelectricity, and explores the effects of its attendant economic and military advantages across the turbulent twentieth century. Landry surveys the environmental and energy changes wrought by dam-building, demonstrating that with global warming, melting glaciers, and calls for a green energy transition, the future of white coal is once again in question in twenty-first-century Europe.
Marc Landry is the Marshall Plan Professor in Austrian Studies and Director of the Austrian Marshall Plan Center for European Studies at the University of New Orleans. He teaches courses in environmental, global, and Central European history. His research focuses on the environmental history of modern Europe. He has held grants and fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Deutsches Museum, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Louisiana Board of Regents, and was the Fulbright-Botstiber Professor in Austrian-American Studies at the University of Innsbruck. His research has appeared in journals such as Environmental History and Journal of Global History, and he is the series editor of Contemporary Austrian Studies. He is the author of Mountain Battery: The Alps, Water, and Power in the Fossil Fuel Age (Stanford University Press).
The Volunteers (2024)
Two mountain rescue organizations—one near Seattle, Washington, the other in Tyrol, Austria—are linked by a surprising connection. Take a journey with historian Mark S. Weiner from America to Austria and back again as he considers the origins and meaning of their work. Both groups have grown from a strong sense of place... because before you can save a stranger, you first must love your home.
Producer, co-director, writer, and assistant editor, Mark S. Weiner is a former professor of constitutional law and the author of multiple award-winning books, including The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals about the Future of Individual Freedom (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), which received the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, and Black Trials: Citizenship from the Beginnings of Slavery to the End of Caste (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), winner of the Silver Gavel Award of the American Bar Association for its contribution to the public understanding of law.
Thursday, March 20th - Edmonton
12:00 p.m. MDT
Arts (Student) Lounge
Arts & Convocation Hall
Lunch, Free Public Screening, and Q&A with Writer, Director, and Historian Mark S. Weiner
Saturday, March 22nd - Canmore
4:30 p.m. MDT
ArtsPlace
950 8 Ave, Canmore, AB
Free Public Screening, and Q&A with Writer, Director, and Historian Mark S. Weiner
Sunday, March 23rd - Calgary
1:00 p.m. MDT
Austrian Canadian Cultural Centre
3112 11 St NE, Calgary, AB
Buffet Lunch, Free Public Screening, and Dessert Reception with Writer, Director, and Historian Mark S. Weiner
Edmonton | Canmore | Calgary
FREE PUBLIC SCREENINGS
