Join faculty from across campus that share an interest in water-related scholarship and creative activities for Water Wednesdays.
Water Wednesdays, the first Wednesday of the month, offer an opportunity for sharing examples of current or planned work, collaborations, and funding opportunities around the common theme of water. All meetings will be 1 to 2 p.m. in Schroeder Hall, room 102.
Dr. Keith Pluymers, Department of History, March 2, 2022
Dr. Keith Pluymers will discuss his project that explores the intertwined histories of climate, disease, and municipal water infrastructure in the eighteenth century. The project focuses on Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who proposed a plan to supply Philadelphia with water while also providing a mechanism to cool the atmosphere on-demand.
Dr. Melissa Heil, Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment, April 6, 2022
Dr. Melissa Heil will present the talk “Geography of Water Billing and Disconnection Policies” that will explore a project mapping variation in billing and disconnection policies across large American cities, identifying the cities where low-income households face the most burdensome policies. The project centers on rapidly rising water rates throughout the United States, making water unaffordable for many American households. Heil will discuss activists’ argument that service disconnections on low-income households represents a violation of the human right to water and sanitation.
Dr. Alan Lessoff, Department of History, May 4, 2022
Dr. Alan Lessoff will discuss a project that is part of an international group centered at the Technical University Delft in the Netherlands. Lessoff’s portion of this project revolves around the re-engineering of the Texas Gulf coast from waterscape into what his Delft colleagues label “petroleumscape.” He will discuss how Houston and its satellite ports, from Beaumont to Corpus Christi, epitomize the extent to which strategic coastal places around the world have been devoted, and indeed sacrificed, to petroleum-based urbanism.
For more information on the speaker series, please visit the Water Center website or contact Joan Brehm at jmbrehm@ilstu.edu.
