Extinction: A History

Extinction: Existential panic since 1945

1945 marked a watershed moment in both human and Earth history. For the first time, a single species had the potential to destroy not just its own global population, but that of all other living things as well. Yet over the next half-century, scientists, environmentalists and industrialists managed to identify a seemingly neverending list of other existential threats to life on Earth. Many of these – DDT, nuclear winter, global warming, Ozone depletion – were clearly anthropogenic. Others – asteroids, volcanoes, magnetic field reversal – were not. Extinction has a history, and what it meant resonated in the global twentieth century, from cold-war geopolitics to everyday environmental injustice and imaginations of other forms of life.

This online exhibition (inspired by Dr Cath Feely’s Exploring the Slum) is the work of Level 6 (3rd year) students at Keele University on the module ‘Extinction: Existential Panic since 1945.’ Students are asked to produce exhibitory materials in one of four categories: biography, controversy, campaign, protest. Content is devised by the students: it could be based on a specific source material, event or person, an engagement with a core debate or analysis of key archive or research project.

Podcasts

Ben Anderson · Deep Ecology: Hannah Snell, Lauren Beardshall and Jacob Lee 2022-3

Ben Anderson · Threads 2022-3 Michael Parchami

Ben Anderson · Jacob Smith - Mayak Disaster 2022-3

Blogs

In 2021-2, students were asked to write blog-style essays under the themes of 'Biography', 'Controversy', 'Campaign' or 'Protest', related to a particular environmental campaign or movement.

Biography

The cast of characters discussed here might include world-famous environmentalists – but it might also contain little-known diplomats, politicians, scientists, environmental justice campaigners, industrialists, or lobbyists. Do not expect straightforward heroes and villains.

Controversy

Extinction crises are nothing if not complex, often with competing and fundamental moral questions at their heart. In this theme, students examine some core controversies in extinction debates – in environmentalism, in global policy, in questions of racial justice, or in issues of political ideology.

Campaign

Green politics in the late-twentieth century has often taken the form of campaigns on specific issues. But from nuclear disarmament and Ozone Depletion to chemical pollution, industrial disaster, and intentional despoliation, campaigns were varied and sometimes conflicting.

Protest

Protesting is often asserted as a basic democratic right – but its roots go back long before modern democracy, and have their origins in the often-environmental concerns of the rural poor. Unsurprising, then, that environmentalism emerged as the major protest movement in the late-twentieth century. In this theme, students write about specific protests, their objectives, strategies, successes and failures.

We hope you enjoy this exhibition, which will be added to each time the module runs.

If you have any questions, contact the module leader, Ben Anderson (b.anderson@keele.ac.uk @Ben_MAnderson).