The (Non)Fictions of Extraction
Turkish writer Orhan Duru is credited with bringing science fiction and its Turkish term, bilim kurgu, into the language in the 1970s, at roughly the same time as another genre, the engineering master plan, became necessary to infrastructure works on Anatolian rivers. Since that time, the two types of world-making—one literary and one technical—have evolved in tandem. This research connects the production of master plans with the cultural production of science fiction narratives, illuminating how each genre expresses the boundaries of its world-making endeavors, and imagines material transformation and human-nonhuman relations.
Fossil Relations: Colorado and the Persian Gulf
A new comparative project will examine the connected twentieth-century histories of water and oil on the Colorado High Plains and the Mesopotamian steppe. From its founding Denver, Colorado, has functioned as an energy and mining hub, which later entailed important and under-explored links to Middle Eastern societies.