Department of Science and Technology Studies

Research Interests

Professor Sara Pritchard is an historian of technology and an environmental historian specializing in twentieth-century France and the French empire.  Her first book, Confluence: The Nature of Technology and the Remaking of the Rhône (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), examines the history of the transformation of France’s Rhône River since World War II.  She shows not only how technological development and environmental management were central to state building and shifting political identities in France, but also how historical actors reworked the boundaries of nature and technology, both materially and discursively.  The book’s Introduction outlines a theoretical framework for envirotechnical analysis, which scrutinizes the relationship between nature and technology, historically and analytically.  Sara’s second book-length study explores the circulation of hydraulic experts, knowledge, artifacts, and practices between France and French North Africa within the context of France’s global empire and transnational communities of water specialists.  She is also presently conceptualizing a research project to investigate the emergence of concerns regarding lightscapes and soundscapes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, focusing specifically on the Dark Sky Initiative, the “One Square Inch of Silence” project, and bioacoustical studies of the impact of human-generated sounds on nonhuman species.

Recent Courses Taught

• Spring 2013 - (BSOC/STS 3181) Living in an Uncertain World: Science, Technology, and Risk
  MWF: 9:05-9:55, 4 Credits
  
  
• Spring 2013 - (STS 4231) Gender and Technology in Historical Perspectives
  M: 2:30-4:25, 4 Credits
  
  
• Fall 2012 - (BSOC/STS 2061) Ethics and the Environment
  TR: 10:10-11:25, 4 Credits

• Fall 2012 - (BSOC/STS 4131) Comparative Environmental History
  M: 10:10-12:05, 4 Credits
  

• Spring 2012 - (BSOC/STS 4131) Comparative Environmental History
  M: 10:10-12:05. 4 Credits.
  
  
• Spring 2012 - (BSOC/STS 4231) Gender and Technology in Historical Perspectives
  T: 10:10-12:05.  4 Credits.
  
  
• Fall 2011 - (BSOC/STS 2061) Ethics and the Environment
  TR: 10:10-11:25 + Section, 4 Credits
  
  
• Fall 2011 - (STS 6261) Seminar in the History of Technology
  R: 2:30-4:25, 4 Credits
  
  
• Spring 2011 - (BSOC/STS 2061) Ethics and the Environment
  TR: 10:10-11:24 + Sec, 4 Credits
  
  
• Spring 2011 - (STS 6181) Confluence: Environmental History and Science & Technology Studies
  W: 2:30-4:25, 4 Credits
  
  
• Spring 2010 - (BSOC/STS 2061) Ethics and the Environment
  TR: 10:10-11:25 + Section, 4 Credits
  
  
• Spring 2010 - (BSOC/STS 4231) Gender and Technology in Historical Perspective
  R: 12:20-2:15, 4 Credits
  

Selected Publications

• New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies. (with Dolly Jørgensen and Finn Arne Jørgensen).  Edited volume manuscript for University of Pittsburgh press.  In press.
  
  
• Confluence: The Nature of Technology and the Remaking of the Rhône. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
  http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674049659
  
  
• "An Envirotechnical Disaster: Negotiating Nature, Technology, and Politics at Fukushima," in Japan at Nature's Edge: The Environmental Origins of a Global Power, eds. Ian Miller, Julia Adeney Thomas, and Brett Walker (University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming).
  
  
• "Envirotechnical Disaster at Fukushima: Nature, Technology, and Politics," in Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima Daiichi: Social, Political and Environmental Issues, ed. Richard Hindmarsh (New York: Routledge, expected March 2013).
  
  
• "Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies: Promises, Challenges, and Contributions," in New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies, ed. Dolly Jørgensen, Finn Arne Jørgensen, and Sara B. Pritchard (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press).  In press. 
  
  
• "From Hydroimperialism to Hydrocapitalism: 'French' Hydraulics in France, North Africa, and Beyond," Social Studies of Science, 42:4 (2012): 591-615.
  http://sss.sagepub.com/content/42/4/591.full.pdf+html
  
  
• "The Politics of Opting Out" (letter), Conservation Biology 26 (June 2012): 382-383.
  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2012.01848.x/pdf
  
  
• "An Envirotechnical Disaster: Nature, Technology, and Politics at Fukushima," Environmental History, 17:2 (2012): 219-243.
  http://envhis.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/2/219.full.pdf+html
  
  
• “The Nature of Industrialization,” (with Thomas Zeller) in The Illusory Boundary: Environment and Technology in History, ed. Stephen Cutcliffe and Martin Reuss.  Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2010.
  
  
• “‘Paris et le désert français’: Urban and Rural Environments in Post-World War II France,” in The Nature of Cities: Culture, Landscape, and Urban Space, ed. Andrew C. Isenberg (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006).