Andy Bruno will present on his book, “The Mystery of the Siberian Explosion: An Environmental History of the Tunguska Event” on Thursday, February 1, 2024 at 4:00 pm in 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive.
About the Lecture: In 1908 the Tunguska explosion in Siberia knocked down an area of forest larger than London. Most scientists believe that an asteroid or a comet caused the blast, but neither a crater nor unmistakable remnants of a meteorite have ever been found. Over the last century, the mysterious nature of the event has prompted a wide array of speculation and investigation, including from science fiction writers and voluntary researchers. Some have even explained Tunguska as a nuclear explosion triggered by aliens. This presentation will recount the intriguing history of the Tunguska event and the investigations into it. Foregrounding the significance of mystery in environmental history, it will show how efforts to understand the explosion have shaped the treatment of the landscape, how uncertainty allowed alternative forms of knowledge to enter scientific conversations, and how cosmic disasters have influenced the past and might affect the future.
About the Lecturer: Andy Bruno is Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Northern Illinois University He is the author of two books The Nature of Soviet Power: An Arctic Environmental History (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and its Environmental Legacy (Cambridge University Press, 2022), which was a finalist for the George Perkins Marsh Prize for the best book in environmental history from the American Society for Environmental History and received an honorable mention for the Reginald Zelnik Book Prize for an outstanding monograph on Russian, East European, or Eurasian history from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
This lecture is co-sponsored by Alice D. Mortenson-Michael B. Petrovich Chair in Russian History and is part of the CREECA lecture series, which is held on Thursdays at 4:00 pm. Coffee, tea, and cookies served starting at 3:45.