"Changes in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of Weather Control in the Twentieth-Century United States"

with Adelaide Mandeville

Postdoctoral Fellow, Society of Fellows in the Humanities

This talk investigates American efforts to control the weather in the twentieth century, and the many debates and controversies that those efforts provoked. Focusing on the 1940s to 1970s, it traces the rise and fall of cloud seeding: a controversial technology in which people put chemicals into clouds, in hopes of controlling everything from rainfall to sunshine, hurricanes to drought, local seasons to the global climate. From booster development projects in the Southwest to top-secret climate warfare in Vietnam, weather control provoked fierce debates—political, legal, ethical, scientific, environmental—about the dynamic, shifting relationships between people and the skies.

Grounded in archival research, Mandeville's work combines historical and cultural studies with theoretical frameworks from the environmental humanities, science and technology studies, political theory, and religious studies. By illuminating the strange and understudied history of weather control, it contributes to critical, interdisciplinary studies on the politics of nature and the ethics of technology in the twentieth century, and today. In addition to its historical significance, this research holds contemporary relevance, as climate change and geoengineering continue to spark fierce debates over the wisdom of controlling the skies through technology.