Kim Stanley Robinson has become one of the most well-known and respected science fiction writers in the world, with a reality-based approach in the spirit of Isaac Asimov that has made him a social thinker speaking “for the future and from the future.” Because of the intensively researched nature of Robinson’s fiction, and the integrated nature of his various interests, ranging from the physical and human sciences to sustainability issues, political economy, urban design, utopia, space, and future history, he has over time built the capacity to speak on a wide variety of subjects, with the emphasis often on what the future may hold for these subjects. His work has received 11 major awards from the science fiction field, a benchmark in discussions of humanity in space, and his Mars trilogy was an international bestseller. Robinson holds a B.A. and Ph.D in literature from the University of California, San Diego, and an M.A. in English from Boston University. He taught literature at the University of California, Davis, before becoming a full-time writer and parent.Reception to follow.

Though energy has been a significant flashpoint in global environmental politics, it is a little explored dimension of postcolonial experience. This is despite environmental and social critiques of big infrastructure that have dominated India’s energy imaginary. Today’s climate crises constitute what Imre Szeman calls an “energy impasse” that calls for such an affective-literary approach to energy. This paper tracks two temporalities of energy, or what I call its “developmental” and “affective” times, beginning with the energy crisis in 1972-73, in genres such as the Hindi coal mining novel and the urban short story. In a reading that acknowledges the political lives of energy, this paper also shows how forms of energy energize the political.

1945 marks, among its other historical connotations, the beginning of the nuclear age. Through an analysis of the nuclear entanglements between the United States and Japan, this essay proposes that era of nuclear energy brings with it a new set of ethical, legal, scientific, ecological, and aesthetic questions about complicity and entanglement. The first part of the essay analyses how the Atoms for Peace program, through which the US brought nuclear power to Japan, was both motivated and structured by the desire to avoid complicity. Through an analysis of mid-century American debates about Atoms for Peace, I show that bringing nuclear energy to Japan was imagined as a solution to the feeling of being complicit in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The second part of the essay turns to Ruth Ozeki’s 2013 novel A Tale for the Time Being as a text that writes back against the US’s impossible and destructive denial of nuclear complicity. In the final part of the essay, I bring together Karen Barad’s theory of quantum entanglement, in which reality emerges from the entanglement of event and observer, with Paul Ricoeur’s theory of three-fold mimesis, in which the entanglement of text and reader fundamentally changes the reader’s experience of reality, to analyze Ozeki’s representation of the kinds of entanglement that take place in the act of reading under nuclear conditions. Ozeki’s quantum narrative form, I argue, offers a counter-theorization of what it means to be complicit or entangled in the nuclear age. In a quantum world where the observer is a part of the ongoing event, as long as we are paying attention, the event has not ceased. To be complicit, entangled, is to be part of the ongoing event – and to have, always, the capacity to change it.

This talk discusses attempts to represent and govern the scientifically, politically, economically, and ethically complex phenomenon of a changing climate via a “single carbon”: carbon in its literally and figuratively atomized representation, a timeless and placeless universal element bound to two oxy-gen atoms to form a carbon dioxide molecule. Positioned as the Archimedean point from which to raise a global regime of scientific-political reason, CO2, the gaseous bearer of the single carbon, was assigned a Global Warming Potential of 1; all other greenhouse gases became “CO2 equivalents.” Individuals leave behind carbon footprints that can be neutralized through carbon offsets; carbon accounting allows investors to engage in carbon trading on carbon markets; countries are carbon emitters; forests are carbon sinks. The talk traces the coproduction of the single carbon and climate change governance through the history of the climate regime, from the adoption of the United Na-tions Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 via its extension in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the “failure” at Copenhagen in 2009, and the most recent adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015. It interprets these developments through a reading of coproductionist Science and Technology Studies—and in particular the concept of constitutionalism—as a political theory that takes account of the politics of knowledge.

This event is sponsored by the Uchicago Graduate Council.

The United States economy has become more energy efficient over its history: that is, every given unit of energy consumed has produced more and more monetary value. Scholars have used this growing efficiency to make both causal claims (e.g., that efficiency results from fuel switching from wood to coal to petroleum) and extrapolations of continuing future gains. However, the U.S. is unique among all countries in its initial inefficiency, from which the country has gradually recovered. No study to date has explained our disproportionate early energy use, nor the factors that brought the U.S. more in line with European economies. We have therefore compiled the first reconstruction of how U.S. energy use has changed over time, mapping out the evolving sectoral usage of each fuel type from 1790 to the present through historical statistics and primary source observations of energy use. Preliminary findings suggest the explanations often provided in the literature are misleading. In the 19th century, the energy use of the U.S. economy was dominated by home heating, and the increasing apparent energy efficiency of the US economy was driven largely by improved household heating methods. Improvements in economic efficiency related to industrial use begin only after the Great Depression. Our ongoing work seeks to disentangle the drivers of this evolution.

Fears of wood scarcity were common in early modern England, and proponents of colonial expansion into Ireland and Virginia drew on these anxieties to justify their enterprises and to solicit support for projects exploiting colonial woods. They argued that Ireland and, later, Virginia were the edges of a wooden frontier. Closely examining the connections between ironworks in Virginia, southwest Ireland, and the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries reveals a more complex political ecology that transcends broad concepts of scarcity and abundance. Contemporaries disagreed about the extent and severity of English wood scarcity. Colonial ironworks competed against each other and with domestic and European producers. Many investors in and leaders of ironworks understood that to compete on quality and price they needed to exploit regulatory differences, forge commercial connections with other producers and merchants, and secure access to markets, materials, and expertise. The Virginia Company’s attempts to build ironworks, culminating in a short-lived project at Falling Creek, demonstrate that early Virginia colonists saw their woods through an Atlantic lens and understood that North American natural abundance needed to be made, not just discovered. Published July 2016, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 3 (July 2016), pp. 389-426. Download paper here.

This event is sponsored by the Uchicago Graduate Council.

Early modern English and British American historical sources often turn up in studies about Native American burn practices, logging in New England, and pre-settlement animal population size.  However few scientists or policy experts move beyond the published natural histories to work with archival sources.  This is perhaps due to a lack of paleographic training and the burden of decoding the English language as it was written in a very different alphabet with symbols no longer used.  Amy Coombs will offer a short introduction to applied historical methodologies and present her archival data mining project on the role of Brassica napus for seventeenth century agricultural improvement.  Using manuscripts collected by Coombs from the Gloucestershire Archives, Bill Ingram will lead the session in an exploration of the size and scale of the oil crushing industry.  From this we can estimate the amount of potent seed meal produced for green manuring and soil pathogen suppression.   We will also explore logging industry and forestry related manuscripts.

This week’s Workshop is part of a two-day Paleography Intensive running Feb 8 & 9.  The Environmental Studies Workshop will meet as part of the Paleography Intensive during our normally scheduled time on Friday February 8th, however Workshop participants are also invited to register for Introduction to the Alphabet and Symbology beginning at 1:30 pm on Friday and to return for the Saturday sessions. To meet the needs of advanced students, we will cover advanced and intermediate Secretary Hand topics on Saturday through lecture, small breakout group sessions, and one-on-one counseling. Curriculum will be drawn from The Folger Shakespeare Library’s Basic Advice for Reading Secretary Hand, Oxford University’s Paleography Tutorial & Exercises from Rediscovering Rycote, and the Cambridge University online course on English Handwriting 1500-1700.

This event is sponsored by the Uchicago Graduate Council, the Department of History, and the Nicholson Center for British Studies.

During the 1970s an energy boom engulfed the coal-rich fields of America’s Powder River Basin—a region spanning southeastern Montana, northern Wyoming, and the western Dakotas. The Native American reservations that overlay much of these abundant reserves felt the first anticipatory impacts of the coal rush. The state and corporate attempts to territorialize these places into sites of extraction emboldened ongoing struggles among these indigenous communities for inclusion, sovereignty, representation, and legitimacy. This paper pulls from my late-stage dissertation to examine how indigenous communities in the northern plains organized a pan-tribal movement to leverage their resources and tied their visions of coal development to the transnational politics of anticolonialism. Just as many former world colonies, especially in the Middle East, sought to exert diplomatic power over their energy resources in the 1960s through the formation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Native Americans communities tried to leverage their fossil fuels through the creation of an “Indian OPEC.” Their campaign stoked a racialized backlash within the United States and pro-development interests accused these indigenous communities of national disloyalty during the 1970s “energy crisis.” The paper explores how Native Americans became entangled in the era’s hostile discourse of the Middle East “Other” and explores, more broadly, the connections between colonialism and settler-colonialism in energy history, and the relationship between energy and race making. The research for this paper relies on oral histories and archival research in the unprocessed collections of the Crows and Northern Cheyenne.

Saltpeter was a conundrum to early moderns. It was responsible for life and death as well as growth and destruction. It could be extracted from earth, air, and water; produced fire; looked like a mineral; propagated like a vegetable; and seemed to be an integral component in animal blood. As one of the principal ingredients in gunpowder, mining, purchasing, manufacturing, or otherwise securing saltpeter became a national security issue for most European countries by the fifteenth century. However, it had other practical uses, most notably as a fertilizer, a seed steep, and an insect repellent in the agriculture, horticulture, and gardening. This article (based on two chapters of my dissertation) details the growing knowledge of saltpeter’s (al)chemical properties and its major uses outside of the gunpowder industry, especially in agriculture from the late sixteenth through mid-seventeenth centuries in England. It focuses on the separate but coalescing practices of early saltpetermen, who mined or manufactured saltpeter, and alchemists with a keen interest in vitalist matter theory and the sources of life in inert matter (with all the practical and philosophical implications contained therein). Manufacturing centers to produce saltpeter artificially for the purposes of securing supplies of gunpowder had existed in Europe since the fifteenth century and in England since the mid-sixteenth, but they took on new dimensions after the English Civil Wars. Projects spearheaded by members of the Hartlib Circle, though originally motivated by a desire to supply Commonwealth forces with ample supplies of gunpowder, morphed into attempts to create artificial fertilizers, particularly during the Interregnum. Focusing, in part, on the efforts of Benjamin Worsley to undergird these endeavors with informed chemical philosophy and the most recent alchemical techniques, I track the multifarious nature of these projects, which sought not only to create artificial fertilizers for the purposes of agricultural improvement, but also to provide poor relief, to capitalize on a new international markets, to contribute to social reform, and to seek the vital seat of life via alchemical means. Ultimately, I argue that these efforts reveal a deep interest in mid-seventeenth-century England with the application of the operational techniques of alchemy to some of the thornier problems of agricultural production.

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin is a feature documentary exploring the remarkable life and legacy of the late science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. Best known for groundbreaking works such as A Wizard of Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Dispossessed, Le Guin defiantly held her ground on the margin of “respectable” literature until the sheer excellence of her work, at long last, forced the mainstream to embrace fantastic literature. Her fascinating story has never before been captured on film. Produced with Le Guin’s participation over the course of a decade, Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin is a journey through the writer’s career and her worlds, both real and fantastic. Viewers will join the writer on an intimate journey of self-discovery. The film features stunning animation and reflections by literary luminaries including Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Michael Chabon, and more

This event is sponsored by the Uchicago Graduate Council.

In an era increasingly focused on the question of how to value fresh water, this essay argues that questions of value cannot be parsed apart from the multiple ontologies that undergird those value judgments. Returning to Nelson’s observation that water exists “in a metaphysical blindspot,” this essay describes what chastened metaphysics have to do with fresh waters’ pluralities and depicts three apertures by which contemporary water discourses delineate fresh waters’ values: economic theory and neoliberal market practice, paradigms of liberal governance, and cultural-religious multiplicities. In the latter, fresh waters’ life-giving properties tend to be accorded central respect in ways that often exceed the ontological understandings and moral possibilities preferred by western liberal discourses in an era that has been decisively shaped by scientific, hydraulic/extractive modernity and rational planning. Parsing the ways that selected cultural-religious formulations align with or challenge dominant governance paradigms, this essay argues that decolonial ways of proceeding are necessary if value discourse and ethical action are to be substantially oriented toward the inclusive, long-term flourishing of human and other bodies of waters.

This event is part of the “Being Human in the Age of Humans: Perspectives from Religion and ethics” project, led by Lisa h. Sideris, Indiana University (PI), Celia Deane-Drummond, University of Notre Dame, Sarah E. Fredericks, The University of Chicago, and Kyle Powys Whyte, Michigan State University. This project is supported by the Humanities Without Walls consortium, based at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Humanities Without Walls consortium is funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This paper will provide a brief sketch of the history of our planet’s “newest sphere,” the technosphere, over roughly the last ten thousand years. The paper does three things. First, it offers a definition of the technosphere as a multi-scalar, deep-historical phenomenon which is neither biological nor geological. The scales considered in this paper are those of equipment, capsules, networks, anthromes and anthropogenic sinks. Second, it asks how thinking in terms of space, scale, technology and materials can complement and complicate our increasingly stadial Anthropocene narratives. Third, it offers some very preliminary thoughts on another, more overlooked dimension of large-scale technological change: how technospheric arrangements, notably the emergence of hyper-encapsulated, networked living, have reshaped human affective relations and neurological experience.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), India’s ‘100 per cent organic state’ Sikkim has won the ‘Oscar for best policies’ in promoting agroecological and sustainable food systems. In 2016 the small Himalayan state bordering Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet declared itself to be India’s first fully organic state. This paper explores the conundrum of Sikkim’s growing local, national and international credibility as a pioneering green state, despite the “organic mission” failing to meet the various conditions that legitimize the paradigm of organic agriculture. Sikkim’s organic mission has not brought self-sufficiency to the state or its farming class. Neither has it saved farmers from exploitative middle-men by bringing better income for organic produce. Contrary to the principle of farmer’s sovereignty, the “mission” was enforced without any legal basis for banning chemical agrarian inputs. Despite regional consternation about state authoritarianism as well as income loss and the declining resilience of crops, Sikkim has not seen farmer protests, the voting out of government, or significant civil opposition. What prevents the contradictions of the organic “mission” as a purported welfare scheme from precipitating an all-out crisis of legitimacy for the development state? The aim of this paper is not to present a critique of green-washing. Rather it analyzes the state-craft through which the narrative of green developmentalism is sustained. It is thus an ethnographic interjection into the debates over sovereignty in organic agriculture. Offering a more nuanced perspective on the role of the state in the eco-politics of food sovereignty, the study attends both to the state’s efficacy in mobilizing collective affective agrarian imaginaries, and to its cunning in avoiding bearing the risks of the agrarian transformations which it advocates.