ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Problem-solving the Nuclear Age

• In Event: Nuclear History as Global History: Current Debates and New Perspectives 2

English Abstract

The history of nuclear science, in and of its own volition, has long left its academic boundary to contaminate ordinary, everyday life. Within the context of the existential and planetary crisis, teams of multidisciplinary researchers are exploring collaborative problem-solving methods to cultivate foresight with a shared responsibility for the healing or harming potential of their contributions. In this manner, critical nuclear studies scholars address an incomprehensibility of ongoing radiation harm in peer reviewed scholarship paired with lived experiences, anchored by multimedia and artistic creative interventions by affected communities and individuals. Defying the containment of a narrative arc, this scholarship acts as fractals showing patterns of invisibility, temporality, unaccountability, secrecy, disconnected, denied, or unseen consequences for especially Indigenous, minority, women, and children's bodies, animals, plants, "resources"; land, air, waters, spirit. New inquiry could explicitly use radiation harm and healing itself as an object of study for real world interventions. Warfare ecology, disability and feminist studies can enrich this effort along with existing scholarship that map transnational relationships (and resistances to) the nuclear infrastructure laid by governments, agencies, UN technical experts, industrial and academic scientists; moving beyond content towards seeking solutions for a nuclear age.

Author

• Linda Richards, Oregon State University