2024 Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture

This lecture will be presented simultaneously in person and virtually. The Zoom link is here. 

The 2024 Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture will be presented by Nan Kim (Associate Professor, UWM Department of History).

What can offer resources for hope at a time of escalating ecological crisis and alarming nuclear dangers? This talk argues for approaching this question by looking to the historical and contemporary legacies of two vital public intellectuals: Rachel Carson (1907–1964) and Jonathan Schell (1943-2014). Credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement and the nuclear-disarmament movement respectively, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth (1982) were both landmark bestsellers of their time and remain exemplars of moral clarity as powerful interventions concerning critical issues of sweeping real-world impact.

This project explores the work of these authors as models of research-based interventions which helped to galvanize collective action for bringing about transformative change in the face of pressing global challenges, despite profound uncertainty about the future. The talk also revisits the far-reaching influence of these authors’ writings as testament to the power of poetic language for overcoming paralysis and creating a renewed sense of urgency in response to ethical questions of intergenerational social justice.

About the speaker:

Nan Kim, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History & Co-Director of Public History at UWM as well as an Affiliated Professor of Anthropology. She serves as Faculty Lead/PI for the Working Group on STS (Science & Technology Studies) at the Center for 21st Century Studies and is Core Faculty in the Graduate Programs in Public History and Museum Studies. Kim is also the Regional Editor for Korea on the Editorial Board for the journal Critical Asian Studies. 

Her recent publications include “A New Kind of Tinderbox on the Korean Peninsula” in Current History (September 2024) and “South Korea’s Nuclear-Energy Entanglements and the Timescales of Ecological Democracy” in Forces of Nature: New Perspectives on Korean Environments, edited by David Fedman, Eleana Kim, and Albert L. Park, eds., and published by Cornell in 2023.

Kim’s book, Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide, published by Lexington Books in 2017, was the winner of the 2019 Scott Bills Memorial Prize from the Peace History Society.

Please contact libspecial@uwm.edu for more information and accommodations.