Rethinking Technology, Nature and Society: A Research and Training Program

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal represents a request to fund for a three-year program of research and graduate study to rethink the relationships between nature, technology and society. This will be accomplished by integrating the history of technology and environmental history. Over the past three decades, these two specialties have developed its own journals, professional societies, and graduate programs. Despite this independent evolution, scholars from both fields have come to focus on the central question of how humans have employed technology to shape the natural world. Historians of technology have effectively probed the inner workings of technology, but have not completely conceptualized what they mean by nature. Similarly, environmental historians have analyzed how humans conceptualize the natural world, but they tend to treat technology as a black box. Borrowing from Leo Marx's famous metaphor, this program draws on both fields to deepen our analysis of the machine and the garden (Marx 1964). The pursuit of this analysis will be through graduate seminars, a postdoctoral teaching fellowship, and a monthly workshop series. To ensure an interdisciplinary approach, the program draws on faculty from the Division of Technology, Culture, and Communication, the History Department, and other academic units. The postdoc and two graduate students participating in this project will pursue coursework in technological and environmental history within the framework of the American History PhD program. To attract outstanding graduate students, three-year funding packages will be offered. To recruit students from under-represented groups, the Committee works with UVA 's Emerging Scholars Program, which provides minority students with guidance and support for graduate study. After three years, students will take comprehensive exams in the field of History of Science, Technology and Environment. It is only by rethinking the relationships between nature, technology, and society that scholars will able to understand fully both the triumphs of technology and the environmental perils that confront contemporary citizens. Interactions between technology and the environment also raise ethical concerns, such as equitable access to the benefits of innovation and exposure to its risks. The proposal emphasizes that t is through history that frameworks will be found to help citizens to address the challenges confronting humanity in this new century. This project will stimulate new thinking in the history of technology and environmental history by exploring their intersection. By training students in both disciplines, this program will enable them to build on the analytical strengths of both fields.