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DESCRIPTION:Dangerous Exposures: Work and Waste in Victorian Photography an
 d the Chemical Trades\n	Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan University)\n	 \n\nAbstrac
 t: This paper discusses how the alkali industry transformed two towns in n
 orthwestern England and considers some of the complexities of environmenta
 l systems and stories that are still embedded in the landscape – long afte
 r many of the physical traces of the Victorian chemical industry have long
  since disappeared. The towns of Widnes and St. Helens\, where many of the
  world’s first chemical factories and towns were created in open farmland 
 during the nineteenth century\, are especially important places to study h
 istorical responses to industrial pollution and its associated costs. Like
  modern-day alchemists\, chemical industrialists transformed the rural lan
 dscape\, their factories churning out base elements that were transformed 
 into textile dyes\, soap\, and glass: materials that seemingly defined the
  Victorian era. Yet while many contemporary observers praised the alkali i
 ndustry for providing materials that facilitated modern activities\, other
 s saw a different side to the new chemical industry. Not only did the proc
 ess of generating salt cake from salt and sulfuric acid release hydrochlor
 ic acid gas into the atmosphere\, it also produced an insoluble\, smelly s
 olid waste that became piled in heaps and spread on fields near the soda w
 orks. The chemical trade harmed not only the local air\, water\, and land\
 , however\, it also injured people: especially chemical workers. Drawing o
 n newly recovered archival sources in northwest England as well as textual
  and visual collections at the University of Liverpool and the Wellcome Li
 brary\, this paper will explore the nature and significance of the Victori
 an alkali industry in addressing a range of questions in environmental his
 tory\, history and theory of photography\, law\, and public health. In my 
 research\, I have been examining how photography emerged in the nineteenth
 -century as both a new mode of documenting chemical pollution and a techno
 logical process that was itself the product of a chemical industry that pr
 oduced chemical waste and photographic pollution. The paper offers new evi
 dence of the importance of visual imagery (particularly news illustrations
 \, photographs and lantern slides) in raising public awareness about the p
 otential dangers of alkali waste products for local environments and chemi
 cal workers\, and argues that an understanding of the language of visual i
 magery of alkali industry is useful for understanding the later transforma
 tions of public environmental law and policy in the region.\n\nBio: Jennif
 er Tucker is Associate Professor of History at Wesleyan University where s
 he is also a member of the faculty of the Science in Society Program and t
 he College of the Environment\, and currently serves as Interim Chair of t
 he Feminist\, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. She received her BA in
  Human Biology (Neuropsychology of Vision\, Perception\, and Memory) from 
 Stanford University\, MPhil in the Dept. of the History and Philosophy of 
 Science from the University of Cambridge (Marshall Scholarship\, Gonville 
 and Caius College)\, and Ph.D. in the History of Science\, Medicine\, and 
 Technology from Johns Hopkins University. A historian of nineteenth- and e
 arly twentieth-century British society\, she specializes in the history of
  technology\, science\, art\, visual and material culture. Tucker currentl
 y is working on two new book-length projects. One\, titled  “Science Again
 st Industry: Photographic Technologies and the Visual Politics of Pollutio
 n Reform\,” traces the historical roots of the use of visual evidence in e
 nvironmental science and pollution reform\, and explores the visual repres
 entation in chemical climatology and the presentation of visual exhibits i
 n Victorian courtroom debates over air and river pollution. The other\, ti
 tled “Caught on Camera\,” is a book-length study about the legal and cultu
 ral history of photographic detection and evasion\, and is funded by a Pub
 lic Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She bega
 n work on both of these projects as a Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Re
 search Centre at the Australian National University\, Canberra in 2015 and
  as a Senior Scholar at Birkbeck\, University of London\, in 2016.\n
DTSTART:20181115T210000Z
DTEND:20181115T230000Z
LOCATION:W-215\, Arts Building\, CA\, QC\, Montreal\, H3A 0G5\, 853 rue She
 rbrooke Ouest
SUMMARY:Speaker Series | Jennifer Tucker 'Dangerous Exposures: Work and Was
 te in Victorian Photography and the Chemical Trades'
URL:https://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/channels/event/speaker-series-jennifer-tucke
 r-dangerous-exposures-work-and-waste-victorian-photography-and-chemical-28
 9582
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