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X-WR-CALNAME;VALUE=TEXT:Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard
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SUMMARY:Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard
DESCRIPTION:<h2>The Pen and the Plow: American Agricultural Science and the Infrastructures of Domestication</h2><h3>Speaker</h3><ul><li>Oliver Lazarus, PhD Candidate, History of Science Department, Harvard University.</li></ul><h3>Chair</h3><ul><li><span>Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Committee on Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.</span></li></ul><h3>Contact</h3><p><strong>Henry Austin</strong><br><a href="mailto:henryaustin@hks.harvard.edu">henryaustin@hks.harvard.edu</a></p><h3>Abstract</h3><p>How did the animal agriculture industry go from a period of crisis in the late nineteenth century to the largest global user of land by the end of the twentieth? This talk explores the central role of the American state in this transformation. Drawing on research from my dissertation, this talk examines the global work of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, tracing how the dissemination of certain forms of domesticated animal life -- and the institutions, environments, and practices needed to support them -- became closely aligned with U.S. global interests in the twentieth century. Spanning from the founding of the USDA's Bureau of Animal Industry in the 1880s to the colonization of the the Philippines and Cold War programs in Latin America, I trace how American agricultural science helped render domestic animals into vectors of state growth, economic and territorial expansion, and environmental transformation.&nbsp;</p><h3>Bio</h3><p>Oliver Lazarus is a PhD candidate in the History of Science Department at Harvard. He is a historian of the modern U.S. in the world, specializing in histories of the environment, science, and capitalism. He is particularly interested in how the production of knowledge about and the manipulation of the nonhuman world has been shaped by and also shapes processes of American state formation and capital accumulation both at home and abroad. His dissertation, "Domesticating Empire: American Power and the Industrialization of Life," explores how the U.S. government promoted the global cultivation of specific domestic animal forms, along with the infrastructure to support them, to advance American agricultural and foreign policy interests throughout the long twentieth century. In Fall 2026, he will join the faculty of University of Wisconsin-Madison as an Assistant Professor of 20th-Century American Environmental History.</p><p><span>This event is organized by the Program on Science, Technology &amp; Society at the Harvard Kennedy School.</span></p>
LOCATION:CGIS South, S354
STATUS:CONFIRMED
DTSTART:20251103T171500Z
DTEND:20251103T190000Z
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