Managing the Globe after Empire
New books by Perrin Selcer and Quinn Slobodian show how ideas about the global environment and global economy took shape in response to the end of empire.
Tagged: Science and Technology Studies
Faculty Favorites: Books for the Struggles to Come
Past is ominously prologue in these spring syllabus highlights from Gabrielle Hecht, Paul Sutter, and five other environmental scholars.
Gardening in Outer Space: A Conversation with Simon Gilroy
Astronauts love growing plants in space, and it turns out there are benefits for us on Earth. Botanist Simon Gilroy discusses his experiments growing cotton in zero gravity.
Designing Seeds and Laboratories for the Green Revolution
The modernism of the Green Revolution is visible not only in the genes of seeds developed by agronomists, but also in the architecture of the campuses and laboratories where those seeds were engineered.
How Canada’s Scientists Mapped the Arctic North and Weathered the Cold War
In the 1940s and 1950s, atmospheric studies of Canada’s Arctic North were defined by technological failure. Edward Jones-Imhotep tells the story of the Cold War from a new vantage point—that of an “unreliable nation.”
The Black Birders Who Made White Ornithologists Famous
Nancy Jacobs’ new book uncovers how African birders and vernacular birding knowledge helped build European imperial science.
Seven Ways of Looking at an Eclipse
We know the effects total solar eclipses have on birds, squirrels, and spiders. But what do they do to people?
Seeds as Time Capsules
When Courtney Fullilove looks inside a seed, she sees Mennonite farmers, Comanche agriculture, and Echinacea patents. Her new book, “The Profit of the Earth,” shows that the genes of a seed can narrate the history of American empire.
NASA and the Explosive 1960s: A Conversation with Neil Maher
The author of the new book “Apollo in the Age of Aquarius” shows how NASA shaped, and was shaped by, 1960s environmentalism, feminism, conservatism, counterculture, antiwar protests, and the black freedom struggle.
Biosphere 2: Why an Eccentric Ecological Experiment Still Matters 25 Years Later
Four scholars and one of the original “biospherians” offer their takes on perhaps the largest private science experiment in history.
