‘HISTORY OF SCIENCE, MEDICINE, AND TECHNOLOGY’ SEMINAR

Book Launch: New Under the Sun: Early Zionist Encounters with the Climate in Palestine

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Netta Cohen (Christ Church College)

New Under the Sun: Early Zionist Encounters with the Climate in Palestine by Netta Cohen examines the Oriental and colonial aspects of Zionist knowledge production concerning the climate and environment in Palestine during the first half of the twentieth century. It particularly emphasizes the colonial networks of knowledge pertaining to warm climates in medicine, architecture, and agriculture which both influenced Zionist experts and were shaped by them. Cohen argues that the analysis of professional discourses and practices pertaining to the warm climate in Palestine can provide a new and original perspective on the unique characteristics of the early Zionist colonial enterprise. This book is in part a story of people and their old and new environments, as well as a story of power relations and ecological engagements.

Netta Cohen is a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church College, the University of Oxford. She completed her DPhil in 2019 at St Antony's College and the Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology. Over the years, she has received numerous prestigious fellowships and grants, including from the Oxford-Pears Foundation, the Leo Baeck Institute, the Center for Jewish History in New York City, the Taub Center at NYU, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust. In 2018, she co-founded the Oxford Environmental History Network, and from 2021 to 2023, she led an international online research group on Jewish Environmental History. She is currently working on an exciting new project exploring the history of ecological concepts like 'native' and 'alien' through the global journey of the prickly pear cactus, tracing its movement during modern times from Mexico, through the Mediterranean, to Australia and beyond.

 

The seminar in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology is convened by Alex Aylward (University of Oxford), Erica Charters (Wolfson College), Mark Harrison (Green Templeton College), Catherine Jackson (Harris Manchester College), and Sloan Mahone (University of Oxford)