NextThreeDays: Event Display

23rd Annual Nicholas Mullins Lecture: Uranium from Africa and the Power of Nuclear Things
Venue: Torgersen Hall (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg
Directions: Google Map Link
Date: Friday, March 30, 2012
Time: 3:00 - 5:00 PM
Event Types: Speaking Engagements
Cost: Free
Description:
The Virginia Tech Department of Science and Technology in Society organization presents the 23rd Annual Nicholas Mullins Lecture wtih Dr. Gabrielle Hecht, Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Her lecture is titled: "Uranium from Africa and the Power of Nuclear Things".

The lecture will be held in Torgersen Hall, room 2150. The talk is free and open to the public.

Dr. Hecht's talk is drawn from her new book on the global uranium trade, which was just released on March 9: "Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade".

Lecture Abstract:
We hear much today about a "second nuclear age" fraught with uncertainty. Like other master categories that claim global purview, the "nuclear" inscribes and enacts politics of inclusion and exclusion. These politics are especially clear from the vantage of African uranium mines during the era of decolonization and Cold War.

African ore supplied 20-50% of the West's uranium, shaping global meanings of the "nuclear", with consequences for the circulation of radioactive materials, the institutions and treaties governing atomic energy, and the lives and health of mineworkers. From Niger, to Gabon, and Namibia, this talk explores the manifestations and consequences of nuclearity.

Professor Hecht's book "The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II" (MIT Press, new edition 2009) received the AHA's Henry Baxter Adams award and the Edelstein prize from the Society for the History of Technology. She recently edited "Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War" (MIT Press, 2011).

Her new monograph, "Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade" (MIT Press and Wits University Press, 2012) examines the colonial, transnational, and postcolonial history of uranium production, focusing especially on matters of trade, labor, and occupational health. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research in Africa, Europe, and North America, the book seeks to remake understandings of the nuclear age by looking at Africa in the nuclear world, and the nuclear world in Africa.

For more information, visit: http://www.sts.vt.edu/seminars/mullins2012.pdf