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Gus

@gustavelester.bsky.social
675 followers 1.5K following 18 posts

historian of geosciences & US empire, long 19th century.

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Scarcerc @scarcerc.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
📢 Save the date & send your proposals! The CFP for our workshop "Mineral Expertise: The Rules of Knowing Earthly Matter in the Early Modern World" (Feb 04–06 2027 in Bologna) is open🎉 organised together with @m-azzolini.bsky.social✨ ⏰ Deadline: July 10 ⛏️ 🔗 Info: bit.ly/4e3VBbB #Scarce #HistSci
bit.ly
Call for Papers: Mineral Expertise: The Rules of Knowing Earthly Matter in the Early Modern World
February 04-06, 2027 SCARCE Workshop University of Bologna Deadline for Submission: July 10th 2026
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Gabrielle Hecht 🇵🇷 • she/elle/ella/cis⚔️ • AOC 4USpresident @gabriellehecht.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Yes to ending fossil fuels. The world is currently consuming more energy & more FF than ever. But it’s really not as simple as no fossil fuels = no war. “Green” energy tech generates its own forms of violence, far from the eyes of media. When it ramps up, so will that violence, especially if 🧵
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Libby Robin @libbydeq.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
www.kth.se/anthropocene... Naomi Oreskes in Stockholm! Great news for #Anthropocene people @iceho.bsky.social @eseh.bsky.social
kth.se
Naomi Oreskes: How climate change breaks the promise of progress | KTH
Naomi Oreskes, leading voice on the reality of anthropogenic climate change and the history of efforts to undermine climate action, will visit Stockholm April 24 for an evening event at ABF Huset, Sto...
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Charlotte Abney @abney.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Applications for 2026-27 fellowships at @sciencehistory.org are still open until Jan 15, with recommendations due Jan 31! ⏰📚 Could your research benefit from time in our archives, rare books, instruments, and other collections? Find info about our fellowships and our guide for applicants here!
sciencehistory.org
Science History Institute Fellowships
The Institute is home to the largest private fellowship program in the historical study of science, medicine, and technology in the United States.
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
I am organizing a workshop on “critical mineral histories” in March 2026. If you or someone you know might be interested in participating, please see the following CfP for more information on the concept and how to submit a proposal (by 10 January, if possible). Thanks! www.kth.se/anthropocene...
kth.se
Workshop: Critical Mineral Histories | KTH
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
I am organizing a workshop on “critical mineral histories” in March 2026. If you or someone you know might be interested in participating, please see the following CfP for more information on the concept and how to submit a proposal (by 10 January, if possible). Thanks! www.kth.se/anthropocene...
kth.se
Workshop: Critical Mineral Histories | KTH
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
"the Pentagon is stockpiling huge stores of critical minerals that are needed for a range of climate technologies ... for use in military hardware – from precision-guided weaponry and advanced communication systems to .. 'AI-driven autonomous warfare platforms.'"
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
CONVERSATION with Thea Riofrancos: “The term ‘critical minerals’ can trick us into thinking something is scarce” open.substack.com/pub/breakdow...
open.substack.com
CONVERSATION with Thea Riofrancos: “The term ‘critical minerals’ can trick us into thinking something is scarce”
Read a sneak preview from Issue #2 — out 22 September ⛏️🌱
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David Silkenat @davidsilkenat.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Very happy to be included in the new issue of @gliamericanhistory.bsky.social History Now, with @mkn.bsky.social, @catherinemcneur.bsky.social, Keith Pluymers, Lauret Savoy, and Sara Dant www.gilderlehrman.org/history-now/...
gilderlehrman.org
The Natural Resources of the United States in the Shaping of History | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
The Natural Resources of the United States in the Shaping of History | | SPECIAL FEATURE A pair of recent Book Breaks episodes featuring contributors to History Now 76: “Saving Yellowstone: Exploratio...
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Media+Environment @mediaenviron.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
**CALL FOR PAPERS** It’s been a hot minute! We are seeking proposals for another new stream on “Critical Minerals and Media Technologies,” edited by @siobhanangus.bsky.social and @gustavelester.bsky.social. The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2025. mediaenviron.org/post/3478-ca...
mediaenviron.org
Call For Papers: Critical Minerals and Media Technologies | Published by Media+Environment
We invite contributions for a forthcoming stream of the UC Press open access journal Media+Environment entitled “Critical Minerals and Media Technologies,” edited by Siobhan Angus and Gustave Lester.
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Very excited to see the launch of the digital history project "Petrodelphia: America's First Petrochemical Corridor," showcasing Philadelphia’s relationship to petrochemical industries. I co-authored the entry "Pennsylvania Coal and Philadelphia,” for anyone interested: petrodelphia.org
petrodelphia.org
Home, Petrodelphia: America's First Petrochemical Corridor
This website provides you—and others who care about the past and future of Philadelphia—a rich collection of sources about the South Philadelphia refinery complex and other petrochemical sites along t...
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Petter Hellström @nphellstrom.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
The Swedish UPPSALA DECLARATION now has 2,557 signatories. The EUROPEAN DECLARATION is catching up with 2,458 from EU/EEA/UK/CH. All signatories refuse to collaborate with Israeli institutions complicit in illegal occupation, apartheid, genocide, and other violations of international law.
Screenshot of the Uppsala DeclarationScreenshot of the European Declaration
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Arn Keeling @arnkeeling.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Want a preview of our book, The Price of Gold, with @mcgillqueensup.bsky.social ? Check out our article in @theconversation.com today: theconversation.com/yellowknifes...
theconversation.com
Yellowknife’s Giant Mine: Canada downplayed arsenic exposure as an Indigenous community was poisoned
Colonialism, corporate greed and lax regulation led to widespread pollution, particularly affecting Yellowknives Dene communities.
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Thea Riofrancos @triofrancos.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
I’m in @financialtimes.com on Trump’s recent move to make the Pentagon the top shareholder in the US only rare earths mine. This is the “worst of all worlds” resource nationalism: a toxic mix of environmental harm, militarism, Big Tech, financial de-risking, and asset appreciation. Link below ⬇️
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
youtube.com/watch?v=xX-A...
youtube.com
James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass Speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
YouTube video by Democracy Now!
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Petter Hellström @nphellstrom.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
#uppsaladeclaration now has more than 2,000 signatories. We refuse to collaborate with Israeli institutions complicit in illegal occupation, apartheid, genocide, and other violations of international law. Faculty and staff in Swedish higher education and research can sign at uppsaladeclaration.se
Signatories 2009–2016.
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Nina Lakhani @ninalakhani.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
By me: Climate cost of Israel’s war on Gaza will exceed the annual greenhouse gas emissions of >100 countries - exacerbating planetary catastrophe on top of the horrific death toll and suffering of Palestinians www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
theguardian.com
Carbon footprint of Israel’s war on Gaza exceeds that of many entire countries
Exclusive: The climate cost is more than than the combined 2023 emissions of Costa Rica and Estonia, study finds
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Adam M. Sowards @adamsowards.net · 27/05/2025
The Secretary of the Interior has ordered the National Park Service and other agencies under his jurisdiction to produce "official" versions of American history. It is, in effect, a propaganda order--and is shameful. www.doi.gov/document-lib...
doi.gov
SO 3431 - Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History | U.S. Department of the Interior
SO 3431
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Petter Hellström @nphellstrom.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
#uppsaladeclaration now has more than 1,300 signatories. We refuse to collaborate with Israeli state institutions complicit in human rights violations including illegal occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Faculty and staff in Swedish higher education and research can sign at uppsaladeclaration.se
List of signatories
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
NSF grant terminations are disproportionately affecting underrepresented scientists. 58% of canceled grants have women PIs, despite making up only 34% of awards. 17% of canceled grants have Black PIs (versus 4% of the pool). Hispanic and disabled PIs are twice as likely to have NSF grants canceled.
science.org
Trump officials take steps toward a radically different NSF
Efforts to shrink staff, budget, and focus have alarmed members of Congress
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NiCHE Canada @nichecanada.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Read the below article, watch this panel, Environment and War: Historical Perspectives and Modern Challenges - niche-canada.org/2025/03/19/r... #envhist #environment #war #militarism
niche-canada.org
Recording - Environment and War: Historical Perspectives and Modern Challenges
Through a series of case studies from Ukraine and other regions worldwide, the speakers examine the lasting environmental consequences of war, conflict, and disaster and address how the ongoing war in...
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Fossil fuel companies ‘poisoned the well’ of public debate with climate disinformation. theconversation.com/fossil-fuel-...
theconversation.com
Fossil fuel companies ‘poisoned the well’ of public debate with climate disinformation. Here’s how Australia can break free
The US has obstructed climate action for decades – largely due to damaging actions by the powerful fossil fuel industry. But Australia has a chance now to lead.
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American Historical Association @historians.org · 24/03/2025
The AHA recognizes that our colleagues in the federal government are facing unprecedented workforce reductions & has compiled resources in support, & are offering one year of free membership in the AHA to former employees of the federal govt. who have been terminated or resigned since January 20. 🗃️
historians.org
Resources for Federal Historians - AHA
The American Historical Association supports historians employed by the federal government. We appreciate the important work they do every day to preserve, chronicle, and interpret American history. T...
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Naomi Oreskes @naomioreskes.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
happy to announce the paperback edition of #TheBigMyth is out today! www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-... Only $21.59 from publisher, or at your local independent book store or via the great bookshop.org bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
bloomsbury.com
The Big Myth
“An immense scholarly feat.”-New Yorker * “[A] scorching indictment of free market fundamentalism . . . and how we can change, before it's too late.”-EsquireWit…
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Northern Environmental History Network @northernenvhistory.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Looking forward to this exciting talk next week from Karl Nycklemoe on 'Legal Avulsions: River Rights on the Upper Mississippi in the 1830s'. Join us 11/02 at 1400 GMT. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1227572023...
eventbrite.co.uk
Legal Avulsions: River Rights on the Upper Mississippi in the 1830s
NEHN February: Karl Nycklemoe will speak on Legal Avulsions: River Rights on the Upper Mississippi in the 1830s
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Bathsheba Demuth @brdemuth.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
I have been loving people’s posts of their writing from this year, so here is a thread of things I published in 2024. Starting with this piece on pasts seen and unseen along the Yukon River in @grantamag.bsky.social granta.com/where-the-la...
granta.com
Where the Language Changes | Bathsheba Demuth | Granta
‘I am on the hunt for the Russian Empire, or what traces might still exist of its colonial enterprise.’ Bathsheba Demuth travels the Yukon river, following the history of the fur trade and the Nulato ...
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Adam Wickberg @adamwickberg.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
We have posted two tenured positions as assistant professor in #Anthropocene history at our centre, please help share widely: www.kth.se/lediga-jobb/... www.kth.se/lediga-jobb/... One is in #envhist and one is in history of science.
kth.se
KTH | Assistant professor in Environmental History with a specialization in Anthropocene History
KTH jobs is where you search for jobs at www.kth.se.
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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Thanks to everyone who read and commented on or contacted me about this piece on George Washington and the overriding tyranny of slavery. I appreciate folks who wanted to talk further either to agree or disagree! I heard 2 issues, both of which I discuss in the piece. 1/ time.com/7173647/geor...
time.com
Even George Washington Was a Tyrant
We don't need to find heroes in our past presidents. We need to try to understand that tyranny has always been part of American freedom.
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Maggie Blackhawk @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social · 13/11/2023
It has been the greatest honor of my career to write a Foreword for the Harv Law Rev. I am grateful to be able to tell this story and tell it from the heart in such a prominent forum. As always, I dream of a day when words can change minds and hearts—and worlds: harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/u...
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Jay Turner @jayturner.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Richard Nixon created the EPA by executive order in 1970. Now Donald Trump wants to dismantle it. What happened? That is the story Drew Isenberg and I tell in our 2018 book, The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump. www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...
Cover of book The Republican Reversal.  Asphalt gives way to ocean.
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
Happy to share that my article, "Land, Fur, and Copper: The Union of Settler Colonialism and Industrial Capitalism in the Great Lakes Region, 1815-1842," was selected as this year's Ronald Rainger Early Career Award in History of the Earth and Environmental Sciences by the History of Science Society
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Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 08/11/2024
As part of my ongoing effort to attend as many talks by LHL fellows (past & present) as possible, I’ve relocated back to the Fiesta Americana for @gustavelester.bsky.social’s talk on efforts to assess global yields of various mineral resources & historicize the “critical minerals” concept. #HSS24
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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 06/11/2024
Here's a list of seven nature- and climate-positive U.S. state ballot measures that were passed in yesterday's federal election -- in California, Washington, Rhode Island, Maine, Minnesota, Louisiana and Colorado.
nature.org
Big State and Local Wins for Climate and Conservation in the United States
Twelve state and local ballot initiatives were passed by voters in the 2024 U.S. elections, providing more than $18 billion for climate and conservation action.
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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 06/11/2024
Well if you set aside the first 90 years of the South, and then another seven or eight decades after that
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 29/10/2024
On Friday, I will present my doctoral work on geology, dispossession, and the rise of the United States as an industrial power at The Huntington Library's conference "Storm Cloud: Environment, Empire, and the Arts in the Industrial Age." www.kth.se/anthropocene...
kth.se
Center researcher joins 'Storm Cloud' conference | KTH
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Minerals @imperialminerals.bsky.social · 07/10/2024
Join us on 17 October for our first Minerals roundtable, 'Extraction, Infrastructures and Networks' in our online series for 24/25. Featuring: Dr Dominic Davies, Dr Nicola Kirkby, Assoc. Prof. Aims McGuinness. More details and to register👇 imperialminerals.ie/events/miner...
imperialminerals.ie
Imperial Minerals — Minerals Online Roundtable I: ‘Extraction, Infrastructures, and Networks’
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 10/10/2024
New term and new terrific line up of speakers for the Instructing Colonial Natural History seminars. Topics are women teaching women; black scientists subverting racialised science, and prize questions in the Batavian society. For Zoom link see poster. #history #colonialism #museums #naturalhistory
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 26/07/2024
My article, “Land, Fur, and Copper,” received an honorable mention for the 2023 Murrin Prize in Early American Studies! As part of this recognition, the journal resposted a related blog post that I wrote last winter. Here's the link for anyone who may be interested: web.sas.upenn.edu/earlyamerica...
web.sas.upenn.edu
“Native Copper”: Exhibiting Anishinaabe Wealth at the U.S. National Museum – Gustave Lester, 2023 Murrin Prize Honorable Mention – EAS Miscellany
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Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 18/06/2024
O.C. Marsh and others used the idea that extinction creates ecological space for more advanced beings, supported by fossils they extracted illegally from treaty lands, to justify the dispossession of those lands by portraying their original inhabitants as naturally doomed to extinction #HistSTM ⚒️🧪
nature.com
Why museums should repatriate fossils
The legacy of a palaeontology expedition into Native American lands 150 years ago should prompt a rethink of where and how fossil collections are curated. The legacy of a palaeontology expedition into...
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 08/05/2024
Happy to announce that I've accepted an offer for the position of two-year postdoctoral researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, joining the new Center of Excellence for Anthropocene History within the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment. Excited to start!
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Alisa Bokulich @alisabokulich.bsky.social · 05/03/2024
"A committee of roughly two dozen scholars has, by a large majority, voted down a proposal to declare the start of the Anthropocene, a newly created epoch of geologic time" ⚒️🧪#philsci For #philsci explanation of this outcome see Carlos Gray Santana's www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
nytimes.com
Are We in the ‘Anthropocene,’ the Human Age? Nope, Scientists Say.
A panel of experts voted down a proposal to officially declare the start of a new interval of geologic time, one defined by humanity’s changes to the planet.
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Gus @gustavelester.bsky.social · 27/02/2024
Very excited to read this.
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NiCHE Canada @nichecanada.bsky.social · 11/01/2024
#CHESS2024 will be held at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) in Montreal, Quebec from June 14-16th Theme: Staples and Canadian History: Commodities, Ports, and Urban Space Apply by January 22nd! niche-canada.org/2024/01/11/c... #envhist #cdnhist
niche-canada.org
Call for Participants: 2024 Canadian History & Environment Summer School / Appel à participants: É...
Our Canadian History and Environment Summer School will be in Montreal in June 2024! Apply by January 22nd!
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Pedro Monarrez @pedromonarrez.bsky.social · 05/01/2024
Indigenous knowledge of palaeontology in Africa | Geological Society, London, Special Publications www.lyellcollection.org/doi/10.1144/...
lyellcollection.org
Lyell Collection
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