During the decade of the 1810s, an unprecedented episode of global cooling swept across the world, the result of two enormous volcanic eruptions, one of which remains extremely mysterious. Though the effects of the climate anomalies have crystallized into American folklore and popular consciousness most notably as the “Year Without Summer” (1816), in fact the event lasted much longer than a year and manifested itself in a number of different ways around the world. New Orleans, the American South and the Gulf and Atlantic coast regions were not spared. In this talk we’ll examine what happened, how people understood and reacted to the strange events occurring around them, and what it means for our understanding of environmental history.

About The Speaker:

Sean Munger is a historian, teacher, author and YouTuber. After obtaining a law degree from Tulane University School of Law in 1998, he practiced law in Portland, Oregon for a number of years, focusing mostly on commercial real estate transactions and particularly timber and forestlands. He then went back to school to pursue his first love, history, and earned a Ph.D. in environmental history from the University of Oregon in 2017. He is now most well-known for his in-depth historical videos on his YouTube channel which cover numerous subjects in U.S., world and environmental history. He also teaches history classes in-person at the middle school level at a charter school. He has written books on a number of subjects including fiction, with his latest mystery novel released in early 2024.