Space Begins on Earth: Rethinking the Cold War Space Race with Communications Satellites

From Sputnik to Starlink, satellites have emerged as powerful drivers of modern-day communication. This lecture will bring Prof. Christine Evans to our campus to discuss the role of environmental science, socialist ideology, and geopolitics in the 20^th century international competition to dominate the orbit. Educated at Yale and UC Berkeley, Evans is one of our nation’s preeminent scholars of Soviet space exploration, a subject on which she wrote numerous papers and articles, as well as a book, recently published by the MIT Press. Aside from the position at UW-Milwaukee, she also held research appointments at the Södertörn University (Sweden), University of Michigan, and the Department of Justice.