Laura Lovett

My first book, Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction and the Family in the United States, introduced me to the way in which histories of irrigation, land reclamation and conservation were bound up with ideas of human population management. I have continued to interrogate the way in which these issues of demographic and reproductive anxiety continue to affect contemporary politics. Since moving to Pittsburgh, I have developed a course titled "The Age of Plastic: Modern Consumption and the Environment in the United States" which explores how we moved within a single generation to embrace a single-use plastic lifestyle and its implications for our environment and waterways.