How did the comfort of a man in a suit become the standard for climate control, not only in the United States but across the world? The answer can be found in the work of a range of scientists and engineers in the first half of the 20th century. This talk will focus on the Harvard Fatigue Lab, a microcosm for the climatic extremes of the world that allowed for experiments that continue to shape how we air condition our homes and workplaces, what we wear (and what we don’t), and who gets to experience thermal comfort amidst the inequitable microclimates of the modern world.
About Bharat Venkat: Dr. Bharat Jayram Venkat is an Associate Professor at UCLA with a joint appointment spanning the Institute for Society & Genetics, the Department of History, and the Department of Anthropology. His first book, At the Limits of Cure (Duke University Press, 2021; Bloomsbury India, 2022), is the winner of three awards: the RAI Wellcome Medal (from the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Wellcome Trust), the Edie Turner Book Prize for Ethnographic Writing (from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology), and the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences (from the American Institute of Indian Studies). His current book project—titled "Swelter: A History of Our Bodies in a Warming World"— is about thermal inequality, the history of heat, and the fate of our bodies in a swiftly warming world. This book reflects on the existential and planetary crisis posed by extreme heat, but from the perspective of our bodies as they experience this crisis. Swelter will be published by Crown in the United States, and Picador in the United Kingdom. Dr. Venkat is also the founding director of the UCLA Heat Lab. His work has been funded by the American Council for Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Institute for Indian Studies, and most recently, by a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award, which is the NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty.
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology.