Waging a World War on Rats

Peter Soppelsa holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of the History of Science and managing editor of Technology and Culture at the University of Oklahoma. His research sits at the intersection of the history of technology with urban and environmental studies. He has written for journals in the history of technology, environmental studies, French studies, and mobility studies. His first book project, The Fragility of Urban Modernity, is under review at the University of Minnesota Press. It examines conflicts over infrastructure in Paris after Haussmann as responses to the complexity and fragility of networked infrastructures that are hybrid, both sociotechnical and envirotechnical. It tracks cultural and political conflicts over urban infrastructures and the construction of urban modernity. His new book project blends animal studies, environmental studies, and the history of public health to examine the global “War on Rats” during the third bubonic plague pandemic of 1894-1959.