Professor Samer Alatout’s project on the “Hydrologies of the Anthropocene: Social Flows and Engineered Watersheds in the Great Lakes Basin” was recently awarded a three-year grant (Jan 2018-Dec 2020) of $138,360 from the Mellon-funded, Humanities Without Walls Consortium. The funding is part of the Consortium’s initiative on “The Work of the Humanities in a Changing Climate.”
The project investigates the history and present of three waterways in the Midwest and their infrastructure: the Chicago, Milwaukee, and Wolf Rivers. Hydrologies of the Anthropocene also investigates the effects of climate change on those hydrosocial systems, the different possible infrastructural responses to those effects, and the potential environmental futures that will result.
Alatout, who is the project leader, is the Director of the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, and serves on the faculty of Community and Environmental Sociology and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Professor Rachel Havrelock, English, University of Illinois, Chicago, is Co-PI on this project. Alatout and Havrelock also collaborate with UW-Milwaukee Sociologist, Jennifer Jordan.
