The Newberry Seminar on Technology, Politics and Culture

Co-Sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago, Roosevelt University, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Northwestern University

Friday, March 19, from 3:30pm to 5:00pm

"Rethinking Second Nature: Power and Nature in the 20th Century Southwest," previously titled "Mapping Power: Urban Space and 'Second Nature' in the American Southwest"

Andrew Needham, University of Michigan

In 1930, residents of central Arizona's Salt River Valley received their electric power from a number of small power plants all located within a 50-mile radius of downtown Phoenix. In 1968, residents of the Valley of the Sun relied on a sprawling network of hydroelectric dams and coal and natural gas-fired power plants centered on northern Arizona's Colorado Plateau, plants that also supplied consumers in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque. This paper examines this transition from local to regional power production in order to investigate the new relationships between nature, technology, and capital forged by urban growth and rural industrialization in the postwar Southwest.

Scholl Center seminars present scholars' works-in-progress. All papers are pre-circulated. If you plan to attend, you may receive a paper by contacting Ginger Shulick via email or phone.

We encourage faculty members to call the seminar to the attention of graduate students.

The full schedule for this and other Scholl Center seminars is available online.