About the Speakers
Jennifer Eaglin, Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University, is a historian of modern Latin American energy development. Her first book, Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol (Oxford University Press, 2022) examines Brazil's sugar-based ethanol industry. While most are aware of the US’ corn-based ethanol industry, her book traces the growth of the Brazilian sugar-ethanol industry from the 1930s to the creation of the National Ethanol Program (Proálcool) in 1975 to the launch of the flex-fuel engine in the 2000s and the labor and water pollution issues that came along with it. Her next project focuses on the development of Brazil's nuclear energy industry. Eaglin’s work has appeared in such journals as Environmental History and the Latin American Research Review.
Diana J. Montaño is Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis. Her teaching and research interests broadly include the construction of modern Latin American societies with a focus on technology and its relationship to nationalism, everyday life and domesticity. Her first book Electrifying Mexico: Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City examines how ordinary citizens (businessmen, salespersons, inventors, doctors, housewives, maids and domestic advisors) used electricity, both symbolically and physically, in the construction of a modern nation. It received the Urban History Association (UHA) prize for the best book in non-North American urban history for 2022 and the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies’ Alfred B. Thomas Award for the best book on a Latin American subject. Her articles on the intersection of humor and class in streetcar accidents were published by History of Technology and Technology's Stories respectively.
Prof. Montaño is a former fellow at the Linda Hall Library where she researched for her second book project, (Dis)Placing Necaxa: Power Networks and Erased Histories in Mexico (1890s-1914), which will explore the transnational networks of capital, expertise, and machinery that contributed to the creation of the Necaxa hydroelectric complex in southern Mexico. This project seeks to rescue the histories of towns, indigenous workers, and water bodies that were displaced—both by force and voluntarily—during its construction. It will also trace how certain everyday native technologies were incorporated in the construction of the Necaxa complex but have remained uncredited. Her collaborative project “Urban Palisades: Technology in the Making of Santa Fe, Mexico City,” which interrogates the role of technologies in cementing socioeconomic segregation in contemporary Mexico City was recently launched as part of the Center for the Humanities’ Divided City Initiative. She is co-editor of the University of Nebraska Press’ book series Confluencias on Mexican history. She also serves as convener for the Working Group: History of Science, Technology & Culture in Latin America. She is also coordinating the edited volume Latin American Technocultural Worlds on aesthetics of technology in Latin America with Assoc. Prof. Yovanna Pineda (University of Central Florida).
Rashmi Sadana is Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University. She studies changing forms of identity in postcolonial, urban India and is the author of The Moving City: Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure (2022) and English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India (2012). She is co-editor (with Vasudha Dalmia) of The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture (2012). Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, American Institute of Indian Studies, the Weatherhead Foundation, and School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. In addition to her academic publications, she has been a columnist for the Mumbai-based newspaper DNA and has written for India Today, The Caravan, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, and The Wire.
