Center for the Humanities and the School of Language, Culture, and Society Present: Nuclear Stories from America's Atomic Heartland
In 1955, following a cluster of cancer cases in a South Dakota farming town, people began to tell stories of nuclear fallout in the red dust that had recently settled on their land. Seventy years later, Dr. Emily Yates-Doerr draws on fieldwork with soil scientists and archaeologists to examine the process of assessing the presence of historic radiation in the dust today.
Join us for a presentation into this research, including the challenges of unearthing history and the metaphors of truth and discovery rooted in unearthing practices: "digging," "revealing," "getting to the bottom of things." Attention to these practices shows that truth is not buried, waiting to be uncovered, but emerges through often-mundane cultural negotiations. This talk considers what nuclear stories can teach us about the relationship between rumors and truth, and it invites reflection on the enduring social fallout of historic military secrecy and violence.
Yates-Doerr is a recipient of a 2025-26 Center for the Humanities Research Fellowship, which supported this project. This talk is also a part of the 2026 OSU Anthropology Lecture Series.
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