Disarming Toxic Empire

March 21–22, 2024 • Austin, Texas

Additional Resources

Resources and Archival Collections at the University of Texas at Austin

  •  The Rapoport Center has created a digital exhibition of the Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold papers, which includes materials on Women for a Meaningful Summit and other anti-nuclear and peace efforts of the 1980s. Farenthold’s activism inspired the “Disarming Toxic Empire” conference. Karen Engle will present on the work of Women for a Meaningful Summit during the Cold War.

 

 

  • The UT JapanLab is a collaboration between the Department of History and the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. JapanLab integrates digital dexterities across different aspects of the Japanese Studies curriculum while creating a specialized space where students can work collaboratively on semester-long projects to develop a wide array of digital resources. Its goal is to generate a steady stream of Japan-focused educational video games and other Digital Humanities content that can be used in classrooms across the world. One such project, Censoring Japan, translates the historical experience of a censor in Japan and to translate it into a video game that brings these censored texts and censors to life. Kirsten Cather directs the project.

 

  • The Briscoe Center also holds the records of the Nuclear Control Institute. The NCI, founded in 1981 by Paul Leventhal, was a research and advocacy center for the prevention of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide. The organization focused its efforts on the elimination of plutonium, highly enriched uranium from nuclear power plants and research reactors, and preventing plutonium and highly enriched uranium from dismantled nuclear weapons from being disposed of in commercial reactors.

 

Resources from Conference Participants

  • Anaïs Maurer’s new book, The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors and Climate Activists, will be published on April 12, 2024 by Duke University Press. The book analyzes the Pacific literature that challenges the environmental racism behind radioactivity and rising sea levels. Maurer identifies strategies of resistance uniting the region by analyzing an extensive multilingual archive of decolonial Pacific art in French, Spanish, English, Tahitian, and Uvean, ranging from literature to songs and paintings. Pre-order it here!

 

 

  • Check out Abena Dove Osseo-Asare’s book, Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence (Cambridge University Press, 2019). By placing interviews with town leaders, physicists and local entrepreneurs alongside archival records, Osseo-Asare explores the impact of scientific pursuit on areas surrounding the Africa’s first nuclear programme after independence, focusing on how residents came to interpret activities on these ‘Atomic Lands’. This combination of historical research, personal and ethnographic observations shows how Ghanaians now stand at a crossroad, where some push to install more reactors, whilst others merely seek pipe-borne water. Atomic Junction won the 2020 Martin A. Klein Award in African History from the American Historical Association.

 

  • Carrying Fukushima is a solo live performance as part of A Body in Fukushima, the extensive and expanding collaborative project between Eiko Otake and photographer/historian William Johnston. Their artistic collaboration started in 2014 by visiting Fukushima, Japan together three years after the 2011 triple disaster. After two visits to Fukushima in 2014 and an initial series of four photo exhibitions, they returned to Fukushima again in 2016, 2017, and 2019. Between these visits, Eiko created videos of various lengths from Johnston’s still photographs and with these videos presented a number of multi-media exhibitions in which she performed. In 2016, Danspace Project (NYC) presented Eiko’s solo works in a month-long “Platform,” A Body in Places, including a 24-hour Fukushima exhibition in its church sanctuary. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City hosted a six-month exhibition, which culminated with a Fukushima memorial in March 2017. That same year, Eiko created a seven-hour video from photographs taken in Fukushima and performed a day-long event in each of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s three locations. In 2021, Johnston and Eiko published a book of photos and essays, A Body in Fukushima. Eiko also created a film with the same tile, which premiered at MoMA in 2022 and has been screened internationally. It is currently being exhibited at the 2024 Yokohama Triennale (Japan). For more on the project, please visit https://www.eikootake.org/a-body-in-fukushima.

 

  • In August 2023, Bedi Racule’s poem, “See you Soon, Lagoon”, showcasing tremendous loss due to nuclear testing, was produced as a video and launched at the Pacific Islands Forum on the International Day Against Nuclear Weapons.

 

 

  • Check out “The Missiles on Our Rez”, a podcast hosted by Ella Weber, about the nuclear missiles stored on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The project is a joint collaboration between Scientific American, Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, Nuclear Princeton, and Columbia Journalism School.

 

  • Will Wilson’s project Connecting the Dots is an artistic endeavor in the spirit of citizen science that uncovers histories, provides tools, and proposes changes. The counter-survey uses drone-based, aerial, and app-activated photography to help Diné people re-story our narrative. One component of the project is a comprehensive study of over 500 abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) on the Navajo Nation. It currently focuses on more than 100 AUMs along Arizona’s Highway 89. In addition to recording striking aerial images of huge facilities imperceptible at ground level, drones offer a unique out-of-body experience. Drone photography has roots in surveillance and control but can also be an instrument of counter forensics used to reveal environmental injustice. See Wilson’s portfolio here.

 

  • Ian Zabarte is a leader of the Native Community Action Council. Read more about its work here. Zabarte is also prominently featured in the recent documentary “Downwind,” highlighting the over 900 nuclear bombs dropped on Shoshone land from 1951 to 1992. Read more about the film here.

 

Other Resources and Collections

 

 

  • Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security (SGS), based in the School of Public and International Affairs, works on nuclear arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament to reduce the dangers from nuclear weapons and nuclear power. It is one of the oldest and most highly regarded academic programs focused on technical and policy studies on nuclear issues in the world. https://sgs.princeton.edu/about

 

  • Check out the Nuclear Princeton project: It aims to revisit the scientists and knowledge coming out of Princeton University and the under-acknowledged impacts of nuclear science, technology, and engineering on Native lands and communities. The project involves archival and ethonographic research and interviews to connect with people both involved with and affected by the nuclear age. — Read more here: https://nuclearprinceton.princeton.edu/overview

 

 

  • Read more about the Moruroa Files: This editorial project began two years ago in a collaboration between INTERPRT, a collective of researchers, architects and spatial designers who focus on environmental issues, and the investigative, multi-media newsroom Disclose. Our common objective was simple, but had never before been attempted, namely to fill in the missing pages of the history of France’s nuclear weapons tests in Polynesia. For this international investigation, we teamed up with researcher Sébastien Philippe a member of Princeton University’s Science and Global Security programme. His task was to scientifically analyse, one by one, all of the information and data recorded by the French military at the time of the tests. This interactive platform exposes, for the first time ever, the information that has been hidden from public debate by the French authorities for five decades. https://moruroa-files.org/en/about