ABSTRACT - Increasingly, arguments about limits to growth, sustainability, development and climate change have come to stand in competitive tension with arguments for social and racial equality. Why is that case? What are the claims and underlying anxieties that polarize western societies? How do white nationalist movements relate to populist and fascist movements in the first half of the 20th century? What is new and different about them now? What is the relationship between environmentalism, rightwing populism and the climate crisis?
BIO - Anne Berg studies the histories of waste and recycling, film and cities, racism and genocide. Trained as a historian of modern Germany and Europe, Anne increasingly ventures into more global terrain. Her research proceeds along a number of parallel tracks, connected by a sustained interest in the visual, the spatial and the material. She has published articles on the history of waste in Nazi Germany, the United States and South Africa. Currently, Anne is working on a book project that examines the disturbing connections between waste management and genocide in the Third Reich, entitled Empire of Rags and Bones: Waste and War in Nazi Germany. At Penn, Anne teaches courses on the history of National Socialism, world history, environmental history and the history of garbage.
