“Curry’s story of maize is a fresh, provocative, and sharply argued critique of the plant genetic scarcity myth. Her keen assessment of agribusiness machinations is one of the best ever.”
Deborah Fitzgerald
Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction
Helen Anne Curry
published by the University of California Press, January 2022
available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book
Charting the political, social, and environmental history of efforts to conserve crop diversity.
Many people worry that we’re losing genetic diversity in the foods we eat. Over the past century, farm fields have increasingly been dominated by crop varieties standardized for industrial agriculture. In response, concerned scientists, farmers, and eaters have sought to protect fruits, grains, and vegetables they consider endangered. Behind this widespread concern lies another extinction narrative, which concerns the survival of farmers themselves.
Endangered Maize draws on the rich history of corn in Mexico and the United States to uncover this hidden narrative and show how it shaped conservation strategies. Traversing more than a hundred years of agriculture and conservation, it reveals how those who sought to protect native, traditional, and heritage crops forged their methods around the expectation that political and economic transformations would eliminate diverse communities and cultures. Ultimately it argues for new understandings of endangerment—and alternative strategies to protect and preserve crop diversity.
Agricultural Science as International Development: Historical Perspectives on the CGIAR Era
Helen Anne Curry and Timothy W. Lorek, Editors
forthcoming from Cambridge University Press
A critical examination of science-led development and it consequences.
For more than fifty years, international aid for agricultural research has been shaped by an unusual partnership: an ad-hoc consortium of national governments, foreign aid agencies, philanthropies, United Nations agencies, and international financial institutions, known as CGIAR. Formed in 1971 following the initial celebration of the so-called Green Revolution, CGIAR was tasked with extending that apparent transformation in production to new countries and crops. In this volume, leading historians and sociologists explore the influence of CGIAR and its affiliated international research centres. Traversing five continents and five decades of scientific research, agricultural aid, and political transformation, it examines whether and how science-led development has changed the practices of farmers, researchers, and policymakers. Although its language, funding mechanisms, and decision-making have changed over time, CGIAR and its network of research centres remain powerful in shaping international development and global agriculture.
“Such varied and important insights into the history of biological innovation and its many aspirations seem as relevant as ever in our ongoing search for new tools to reshape living things to our goals, needs, and desires—and to envision life as it could be.”
Luis Campos, Science
Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America
Helen Anne Curry
published by University of Chicago Press, 2016
available in cloth, paperback, and e-book
An unexpected history of innovation in living things.
Plant breeders have long sought technologies to extend their control over nature. Early in the twentieth century, this led some to experiment with startlingly strange tools: x-ray machines, chromosome-altering chemicals, radioactive cobalt. Contemporary reports celebrated these mutation-inducing methods as ways of generating variation in plants on demand, a power that would ultimately allow breeders to genetically engineer crops and flowers to order. Many imagined that creating a new food crop or garden flower would soon be as straightforward as innovating any other modern industrial product.
Evolution Made to Order traces the history of America’s pursuit of tools that could speed up evolution. It is an immersive journey through the scientific and social worlds of midcentury genetics and plant breeding and a compelling exploration of American cultures of innovation.
“This book crystallizes decades of historical scholarship, and is the single best introduction to the topic.”
Lorraine Daston
Worlds of Natural History
H. A. Curry, N. Jardine, J. A. Secord and E. C. Spary, editors
published by Cambridge University Press, 2018
available in cloth, paperback, and e-book
A centuries-long journey into nature through the eyes of those who’ve mapped, measured, and marveled at it.
From Aztec accounts of hibernating hummingbirds to contemporary television spectaculars, human encounters with nature have long sparked wonder, curiosity and delight. Written by leading scholars, this richly illustrated volume offers a lively introduction to the history of natural history, from the sixteenth century to the present day. It covers an extraordinary range of topics, from curiosity cabinets and travelling menageries to modern seed banks and radio-tracked wildlife. Accessible to newcomers and established specialists alike, Worlds of Natural History provides a much-needed perspective on current discussions of biodiversity and an enticing overview of an increasingly vital aspect of human history.
“Worlds of Natural History comes as close as is humanly possible to living up to its title. The essays illuminate almost every aspect of the vast enterprise of natural history, from collecting, networking, and voyaging to preserving, image-making, and classifying. Its sites are as various as the Renaissance apothecary’s shop and the contemporary genetics lab; its locales criss-cross the globe. This book crystallizes decades of historical scholarship, and is the single best introduction to the topic.”
Lorraine Daston, Director, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin