15 Minute History

Episode 143: Glen Canyon and Water Infrastructure


Listen Later

Climate change and population growth is creating a new appreciation — and anxiety — around water infrastructure, both in the western United States and around the world. We're joined today by Professor Erika Bsumek, whose new book, The Foundations of Glen Canyon, focuses on America’s  second highest concrete-arch dam. Not simply a massive piece of physical infrastructure it is also what Professor Bsumek calls an infrastructure of dispossession whose history shows us how cultural structures, power relations and indigenous knowledge and labor interacted in the 19th and 20th centuries — and gives us a window into how the might interact moving forward as the fight for western water intensifies in an age of climate change. 

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

15 Minute HistoryBy The University of Texas at Austin