Research Interests for Risha Amadea Druckman

As a scholar of American history my research has focused principally on intersections among the fields of environmental, labor, and business history. In the most general sense I explore how the evolution of modern capitalism has informed popular conceptions of nature, transformed landscapes, and shaped human social relations; and conversely the role that landscape and environment have played in shaping human culture and the social, political, and economic institutions of the past. Critical theory, philosophy, creative writing/narrative, and intellectual history are also of great interest to me. I am currently working on a disseration about the wind in America: the labor processes involved in the production of knowledge about the wind--scientific, religious, folkloric, and otherwise-- and the causes and consequences of this labor and its various applications. My advisor is Gunther Peck. My committee includes Edward Balleisen, Elizabeth Fenn, Katherine Morrissey, and Michael Hardt.