Research Interests: History of science, technology, and engineering; public infrastructure and technology; state sponsorship of research and design; theory and epistemology of applied sciences; science-fiction and cultural acceptance of scientific and technological advance; technological fear; infrastructure studies; development studies; environmental justice; rural studies.

Hannah is an interdisciplinary scholar examining the development of large scale infrastructure technologies in the Deep South and Appalachia at the intersections of history, STS, and artistic practice. Their doctoral dissertation examines how the construction and aging of infrastructures impacts environmental and community health in the lower Mississippi Delta. By bringing together archival evidence, oral history, and photographic documentation, their scholarship situates infrastructure failure and maintenance as central concerns of communities fighting for environmental justice and seeks to understand how infrastructure construction and aging mediates our relationships to each other and the land. Their work has been supported by the Charles Warren Center for American Studies, Louisiana State University Libraries, the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, and the Linda Hall Library. Hannah is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ). She completed her PhD in late June of 2023 and is now a tenure track member of the Duke University history department

Publications:

“Crafting Queer Histories of Technology,” in Y’all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia, ed. Z. Zane McNeill (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2022).

“Review: Proving Ground: Expertise and Appalachian Landscapes,” H-Net Environment, 2021.

“Illuminating Science: Scientific Experts in Nineteenth-Century British Lighthouse Reform,” in From the Lighthouse: an Experiment in Interdisciplinarity, eds Veronica Strang and Tim Edensor (London, Routledge Press, 2018).

“Review: Monstrous Media/ Spectral Subjects: Imaging Gothic from the Nineteenth Century to the Present,” The British Journal for the History of Science 51:2, (June 2018): 331-332.

Selected Presentations:

“Petroleum Sovereignty: Native Land & Life at the End of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin since 1927,” Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Technology Working Group, November, 2022

“Decolinization, Decarbonization,” Sustainability Lab invited guest lecture, ENVR E-101: Introduction to Sustainability and Environmental Management, Harvard University Extension School, March 2022

“How Infrastructures Age: Public Power, the TVA, and Environmental Justice in Memphis since 1933,” History of Science Society & Society for the History of Technology Joint Annual Meeting, November, 2021

“Eugenics after WWII: Black, Chicana, and Indigenous Feminisms in the Fight for Reproductive Justice,” invited guest lecture, HS 197: Why Trust Science, Harvard University, November 2020

“In the Long Shadows: Infrastructural Failure, Inequity, and Environmental Justice in the US Deep South,” presentation of dissertation prospectus, History of Science Seminar, Harvard University, March 2019

“All that is Solid: How Art and Artistic Practice Can (and Should) Inform Infrastructure Studies,” Crafting the Long Tomorrow Conference, University of Arizona, February 2019

“Infrastructural Modernities: Rural Appalachia & the Tennessee Valley Authority,” invited guest lecture, HS 100: Knowing the World: An Introduction to the History of Science, Harvard University, November 2018

Previous Degrees:

B.S., Technical Photography, Appalachian State University

M.A., History, College of Charleston

A.M., History of Science, Harvard University

Ph.D., History of Science, Harvard University