Nathan Kapoor, Illinois State University

Description

The geothermal springs of Waiwera, Aotearoa New Zealand, register a familiar settler-colonial pattern: land confiscation, ecosystem destruction, and the displacement of Māori knowledge systems by tourism and therapeutic culture. This paper resists reinscribing that dispossession by centering Māori ontologies—mātauranga—as a framework for understanding Waiwera's water, geomorphology, and energy, offering a bicultural counter-narrative to Western geoscience and resource governance. Rather than accepting settler definitions of "time" and "energy transfer" as neutral, the paper argues that these categories themselves have shaped, and obscured, the history of human relationships with subterranean hot water, producing an archival void around Māori presence. Turning to a specific episode, the paper examines the Waiwera Hotel's role as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers during and after World War I, using their bodily experiences of the waters to reexamine settler tourism, therapeutics, and colonial medicine. This case study forms part of a larger project on Waiwera's contested geothermal history.

About the Presenter

Nathan N. Kapoor is an Assistant Professor of History at Illinois State University, where he teaches courses in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, including Environmental History and the Philosophy of History and Historiography. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine from the University of Oklahoma. Kapoor's research centers on the history of electric power systems, with a focus on New Zealand and the British Empire. He is the author of Powering Colonialism: Electrification, Extraction, and Empire in Aotearoa New Zealand, editor of Electric Power in Victorian Britain, and coeditor of volume 8 of The Correspondence of John Tyndall.

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This event is free to all faculty, grad students, and interested members of the public, but all participants must register in advance. Space is limited, so please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.

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About the British Studies Seminar Series

The British Studies Seminar brings together scholars to discuss work that addresses the history of Britain and the British Empire from the early modern period to present day. The seminar is co-sponsored by the Graduate Cluster in British Studies at Northwestern, Northwestern History, and the Nicholson Center for British Studies at the University of Chicago. Claire C. Arnold (University of Chicago), Steven Pincus (University of Chicago), and Holly Swenson (Northwestern University) serve as co-organizers.