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Research Interests
Science is conventionally understood as a set of disembodied, universal ideas and practices—something that is the same everywhere, something apparently without a geography. Building on work in human geography, history of science, and social theory, much of my work is concerned to push this common sense notion of what science is (e.g., the law of gravity works the same everywhere) in the other direction. Rather than "testing" this hypothesis by jumping out of tall windows at various geographical locations, I am interested in exploring questions about the role of place in the construction of knowledge and about the complex role that the sciences play in environmental politics and governance. I am also interested in the history of geography, cartography, and scientific exploration, and, more broadly, in the development of geographical social theories that help us to understand how science and technology articulate with the social transformation of nature and space.
My research explores these questions around two main historical-geographical contexts. The first, which builds on my dissertation work in geography at the University of Colorado, is concerned with the environmental sciences and politics associated with the Cold War and post-Cold War US nuclear weapons complex. One current project, based partly on interviews with environmental scientists and technicians at the US Department of Energy's Savannah River Site, explores the interface of ecology, industry, and the state in the species-rich (and yet often quite toxic) spaces that were originally produced as buffer zones around nuclear weapons production and testing sites.
The second context that I am working in can be described as the historical geography of science and state formation in late nineteenth century America. This research, including work on John Wesley Powell and the emergence of a government scientific community in Washington during this period, explores relationships among sciences and institutions involved with mapping "Interiors" including geography, geology, ethnology, and philology under the Smithsonian Institution and Department of the Interior and further, it raises questions about the meaning of these mapped interiors for the sovereign state in what was, already by 1900, an increasingly global world.
Selected Recent Publications
Kirsch, S. 2005. Proving
Grounds: Project Plowshare and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear
Earthmoving.
New Brunswick,
NJ,
and
London:
Rutgers
University
Press.
Kirsch, S. 2005.
"War/Peace" in P. Cloke, P. Crang, and M. Goodwin (eds),
Introducing Human Geographies, pp 559-572.
London:
Edward Arnold.
Kirsch, S. 2004. Harold Knapp and the geography of normal
controversy: Radioiodine in the historical environment
. Osiris, Vol. 19: Landscapes of
Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments, G.
Mitman, M. Murphy, and C. Sellers (eds), 167-181.
Kirsch, S., and Mitchell, D.
2004. The nature of things:
Dead labor, nonhuman actors, and the persistence of
Marxism . Antipode 36(4): 687-705.
Havlick, D.
and Kirsch, S. 2004. A production
utopia RTP and the
North
Carolina
Research Triangle . The Southeastern
Geographer 44(2):123-137.
Kirsch, S.
2003. Empire and the Bush
Doctrine . Society and Space 21(1):
1-6.
Kirsch, S. 2003.
Introduction: Critical forum on Empire. ACME:
An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies
2(2): 221-226.
Kirsch, S. and Saunders,
R. 2003. A hatalom, a terület és a
transznacionalizmus kritikai geográfiái (Critical
geographies of power, territory, and transnationalism).
Guest editorial and conference report . Tér és
Társadalom (
Hungary)
2: 103-106, trans. M. Lászlón
Kirsch, S. 2002. John Wesley Powell and the mapping of the
Colorado Plateau, 1869-1879: Survey science, geographical
solutions and the economy of environmental values .
Annals of the Association of American Geographers
92(3): 548-572.
Kirsch,
S. 2002. "Spectacular Violence, Hyper-Geography,
and the Question of Alienation in Pulp Fiction."
In T. Cresswell and D. Dixon (eds) Engaging Film:
Geographies of Mobility and Identity, pp 32-46.
Lanham,
Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Teaching
Undergraduate
I teach these courses at Carolina:
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Environmental Politics (Geog 435)
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Political Geography (Geog 453)
-
First-Year Seminar: The Culture of
Technology (Geog 062)
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World Regional Geography (Geog 120)
I am a great believer in inquiry-based
learning, so most of my courses involve a research component.
Visit these links for undergraduate research
projects in Political Geography and Environmental
Politics. These projects have been supported through the
Graduate Research Consultant (GRC) Program, which is sponsored
by UNC's Office of Undergraduate Research (www.unc.edu/depts/our).
I am also serving as Undergraduate Director
for the University Program in Cultural Studies (http://www.ibiblio.org/upcs/index.php).
Graduate Teaching and Advising
I have taught graduate seminars in geography,
social theory, and science studies:
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Mapping Knowledges (Seminar in
Nature-Society)
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Technoscience and Second Nature
(Seminar-Political)
-
History and Philosophy of Geography
Students/Projects:
David Havlick, Ph.D. (2006) "Bombs Away: New
Geographies of Military-to-Wildlife Conversions in the United
States"
Craig Dalton, Critical cartographies;
distributed mapping practices
Lisa Marshall, Geographies of nuclear science
and technology
Joseph Palis, Media and representation;
National cinema in the Philippines.
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