"The Making of Karen Silkwood and the Unmaking of the Plutonium Economy"Sarah Milov, University of Virginia

sarah milov event poster
Fri, February 27, 2026
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Dulles Hall, Room 168

Title: The Making of Karen Silkwood and the Unmaking of the Plutonium Economy

Abstract:

 For a decade after her 1974 death, nuclear whistleblower Karen Silkwood was fashioned into an icon of numerous progressive causes: feminism, the anti-nuclear movement, the environmental movement, civil libertarianism, labor activism, and federalism. These versions of Karen Silkwood were sustained by the litigation brought by her family against her employer, energy company Kerr-McGee. This talk examines how her death and the lawsuit reshaped debates over the “plutonium economy,” a federal commitment to extracting and reusing plutonium from spent fuel waste—theoretically a limitless source of domestic energy amidst the energy crisis. 

Bio:
Sarah Milov is an associate professor of History at the University of Virginia, where she teaches on the history of modern US law, politics, and social movements. Her first book, The Cigarette: A Political History (Harvard, 2019) received the Willie Lee Rose Prize from the Society for Southern Women Historians fand the PROSE Award for North American History from the Association of American Publishers. It was a finalist for the LA Times Book prize and one of Smithsonian Magazine's "Best History Titles of 2019.”  With Katherine Turk (UNC) she is finishing Karen Silkwood: A Life and Afterlives which examines how activists used Karen Silkwood to change law, policy, culture, and Hollywood.

 

This event is sponsored by the Environmental History Initiative and Global Arts + Humanities | Cross-Disciplinary Research Exchange.

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