Hunter Powell Kennedy

HUNTER KENNEDY, then a graduate student at University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, was awarded a grant in April 2023 to aid research on “Far-Thinking: Technoscientific Projection, Climate Governance, and Bordertown Futures in Rural Northern Arizona,” supervised by Dr. Joseph Masco. Constructed from 1956 to 1964, the Glen Canyon Dam dramatically altered the landscape of northern Arizona, creating behind it the 2nd largest manmade reservoir in the United States: Lake Powell. At the same time, the Dam’s former construction camp of Page, Arizona, has become a regional hub for federal science, a world-famous tourist destination, a bordertown to the Navajo Nation, and much more. This project examines the ways in which this remote corner of northern Arizona was reshaped by the conjoined forces of governance, environment, and infrastructure from the 1950s to present. Throughout, the study seeks to understand how life in rural northern Arizona has been reordered around jurisdictional conflicts, resource management discourse, the rise and fall of energy megaprojects, and more. For many, Page is a community both deeply privileged by and yet uniquely exposed to the politics, science, and materiality of energy production. It is thus an ideal site from which to interrogate the futures of this historic technoscientific complex in times of regional megadrought, an aging built environment, and a rapidly changing global energy order. To answer these questions, this project combined 15 months of participant observation, archival research, interview, and media analysis.