A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado

In a new Future of the Humanities Project event series — A Bent but Beautiful World: Literature, Art, and the Environment — we delve into the topical area of our environment. In recent years, we have rightly heard much about the world’s environmental problems, dangers, and disasters. However, in this series, we will invite speakers to explore the ways in which art and literature have foregrounded the inspirational beauty, delicacy, and strength of the natural world.

Operating in the tradition of the atlases developed by activist scholars, A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado is a collectively authored digital project documenting and interpreting the sites, issues, policies, and cultures associated with the American nuclear weapons complex as it enters its ninth decade. With more than 40 contributors to date, the atlas collects and cross-references forms of evidence such as maps, photographs, descriptions of nuclear sites, and briefs offering historical and political contexts. In this presentation, co-editors Sarah Kanouse and Shiloh Krupar will discuss their approach to building both the social infrastructures that created and maintain the atlas, as well as the experimental interface design that resists the compartmentalization of military and industrial nuclear discourses. The presentation will conclude with an invitation to use the atlas as a publication forum for student research in a wide range of disciplines, from art history to science and technology.

 

Participants:

Sarah Kanouse is associate professor of media and arts at Northeastern University and an interdisciplinary artist and writer. Her research-based creative projects shift the visual dimension of the landscape to allow stories of environmental and social transformation to emerge. Her work has been presented through the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Krannert Art Museum, and numerous academic and artist-run venues.

Shiloh Krupar is a geographer and Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor at Georgetown University, where she directs the Culture and Politics Program in the School of Foreign Service. Her research examines the biopolitical administration of asymmetrical life, geographies of waste and vulnerability, and bureaucracy. Krupar is the author of Hot Spotter’s Report: Military Fables of Toxic Waste (2013) and co-author of Deadly Biocultures: The Ethics of Life-making (2019).

Kathryn Temple (moderator) is a professor in the Department of English at Georgetown University where she has taught since 1994. She specializes in the study of law and the humanities. Among her publications are Loving Justice: Legal Emotions in William Blackstone’s England (2019) and the co-edited Research Handbook on Law and Emotions (2021). Her humanities outreach activities include work with military veterans and the incarcerated.

Michael Scott is senior dean, fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, college adviser for postgraduate students, and a member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior adviser to the president at Georgetown University. Scott was on the editorial board which relaunched Critical Survey from Oxford University Press. Scott previously served as the pro vice chancellor at De Montfort University and founding vice chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University.

Online. Free and open to all. Registration is required.

Contact:
Las Casas Institute with Georgetown University
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk