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Georgetown360 |
Meredith McKittrickMeredith McKittrick is a historian of Southern Africa who focuses on the intersection of race, colonialism, and environment. Working primarily on Namibia, the driest country in sub-Saharan Africa, her research interests revolve around dryland environments and water resources, as well as agriculture. After completing her first book, on generational and gender relationships in colonial Namibia, she became a convert to environmental history. Her forthcoming book, The Redemption of the Kalahari: Desert Dystopias and the Environmental Origins of Apartheid (Chicago), tells the story of a century-old river diversion proposal that promised to flood the Kalahari, transform southern Africa’s climate, and create a society of white farmers. (The day after she submitted the manuscript to the press, she found herself in the Kalahari Sands waterpark where, while riding water slides with her youngest child, she further pondered the strange place of the Kalahari in the popular imagination.) She is now pursuing two other projects grounded in southern Africa’s arid environments. The first explores the significance of water and aridity to regional political imaginaries and social identities among communities who live along rivers at the northern edge of the Kalahari and Namib deserts. The second project charts the history of underground resource exploration and exploitation, from water divining to recent attempts to find oil in the Kalahari. Prof. McKittrick lives at the eastern edge of the Appalachians with her spouse; a pit-hound mix named Hazel; an ancient and tailless cat named Bob; and – depending on the season – one, two, or three of her kids. When she’s not working, she can be found in her garden or on the hiking trails near her house.
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