From Fernand Braudel to Walter Prescott Webb, historians have long examined the ways an abundance of water can facilitate trade and prosperity, and how a lack of water can force adaptation and bring disaster. Foundational works of environmental history such as Donald Worster’s Rivers of Empire and Richard White’s The Organic Machine have emphasized the importance of humanity’s ability (or lack of ability) to control the flow of water as a means of understanding the flow of political power. Water history has a long pedigree, particularly in the fields of Atlantic/ocean world studies, environmental history, transnational history, and the history of the American West.

But there is more to water’s human history than questions about where it flows and where the stream ends. This proposed panel explores new avenues of research in the history of water. Water has a history not only due to its abundance or lack, but intertwined with histories of gender, the history of foreign relations, political history, and urban history. As Elizabeth Hameeteman argues, water naturally crosses boundaries and thus its composition can help drive foreign policy. Alexandra Straub examines how people understand water differently through their labor and even the tactile sensation of their hands in a washtub. Stephen Hausmann and Ryan Emanuel both examine how water helps create what the historian Matthew Klingle called “an ethic of place.” For the Lumbee people, the river that bears their name has been a source of both community and environmental dislocation. For citizens of Rapid City, South Dakota, Rapid Creek has had different meanings depending on where in town you lived, and whether you were Native or non-Native person. Water’s use, it’s complex relationship to memory, and its varying chemical composition, are all central components to human history.

How humans have thought about water and the social and political implications of water have been less well studied than the effects and importance of water to human life. Not all water is created equal – different types of water, salinization levels, who is using it and how, are all important, historically contingent, factors in determining the human relationships with this ubiquitous substance. Water permeates and mediates human interaction in many ways, from washing clothing to urban aesthetics, and is a fundamentally transnational element of the global environment. This proposed panel brings together scholars whose work highlights new methods of thinking about how humans and water have interacted in ways that transcend the usual contours of water history.