Episode 26: Dr. Frank Uekötter and Making Sense of the Juice: Florida Oranges and the Problems of Monoculture. Plus, His Upcoming Book, ”The Vortex: An Environmental History of the Modern World”

(Originally published by Sebastian Garcia on November 9th, 2022) The Department of History’s Sebastian Garcia talked with Dr. Frank Uekötter, a Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, working on environmental issues, both past and present, in a global context. Their conversation primarily focused on Dr. Uekötter’s faculty talk event at UCF this past Monday (11/7), which was about the Florida citrus industry and issues of monoculture in this region, but also more broadly (starts at 16:06). This naturally led some portions of the conversation in the podcast to talk about themes and topics from his upcoming book The Vortex: An Environmental History of the Modern World—however the final segment of the podcast is dedicated solely to talking about his book, which will be coming out in February 2023 (starts at 1:01:02). Below you can find some links to Dr. Uekötter’s YouTube videos posted by the University of Birmingham to learn more about his research and his work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j72s4nCoMEw (A Global History of Monoculture)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSp6VyHuLlI (Making Food History)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UmtKexCO0A (Dr. Uekötter research interests)