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Faculty Fellow

Joseph Masco

Professor of Anthropology and of the Social Sciences in the College University of Chicago

Biography

Joseph Masco

Working at the intersection of science studies, environmental studies, media studies, and critical theory, Joseph P. Masco's scholarship examines the material, affective, and conceptual force of technological revolution and its aftermaths.

He is the author of three books, including most recently The Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive World-Making (2020, Duke University Press), which gathers writings that examine the strange American intimacy with and commitment to existential danger. Tracking the simultaneous production of nuclear emergency and climate disruption since 1945, he focuses on the psychosocial accommodations as well as the technological revolutions that have produced these linked planetary scale disasters. Masco assesses the memory practices, visual culture, concepts of danger, and toxic practices that, in combination, have generated a US national security culture that promises ever more safety and comfort in everyday life but does so only by generating, and deferring, a vast range of violences into the collective future.

For more details on his research and publications, please visit his profile page at the University of Chicago.

Featured Project

Engineered Worlds

Project Team:

2013 – 2014

Projects

Engineered Worlds III: Terraformations

Phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea

Engineered Worlds III: Terraformations

A group of historians, geographers, anthropologists, environmental artists, and security and science studies experts developed new theories and methodologies to assess the social ramifications of “engineered ecologies.”

Engineered Worlds III: Terraformations is the concluding chapter in a multiyear project on assessing anthropogenic environments and planetary conditions. Engineered Worlds interrogates the implications of a world where ecologies everywhere have been effected by human industry, and where new...

Engineered Worlds II

Engineered Worlds II

A group of historians, geographers, anthropologists, environmental artists, and security and science studies experts developed new theories and methodologies to assess the social ramifications of “engineered ecologies.”

Human beings are making a profound and irreversible impact on the natural world. This happens largely through industrial activity. And while we have sophisticated abilities to track such changes—for example, we can map the effects of carbon pollution—we lack a deep understanding of the social...

The Logic and Politics of Climate Change

The Logic and Politics of Climate Change

Where and how should the humanities and social sciences intervene in debates about climate change in order to place the science-policy nexus on more ethically, epistemically, and politically responsible foundations?

The profound and intensifying effects of climate change will likely bring significant harm to those vulnerable to the harsher environment to come, human or otherwise. Yet climate debates have so far been dominated by scientists and policymakers, with limited effectiveness in terms of either...