Doctoral Dissertation Research: Project Plowshare and the Politics of Geographic Engineering

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Kirsch, Scott U. of Colorado, Boulder From 1957 to 1973, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) pursued the `peaceful use of nuclear explosives` through Project Plowshare. Nuclear excavation, the detonation of strategically buried hydrogen bombs for massive earthmoving, was considered the most promising of the Plowshare applications. The purpose of the research is to investigate the collisions of science, ideology and politics which ultimately kept Plowshare designs out of the landscape. Primary research will emphasize AEC-related archival materials which document Plowshare's scientific and promotional aims, as well as, the public discourse through which scientific and political debates over Plowshare were voiced. The research will argue that to understand processes through which landscapes are made, we must utilize the imagined landscapes which fail to take form. The work incorporates contemporary theories of landscape production to untangle the complex relations between the accumulation of scientific knowledge and the production of space.