Gökçe Günel of the University of Arizona presents “Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi” at 4 p.m. March 26 in Room 1080, Derby Hall, on Ohio State’s Columbus campus. Admission is free and open to the public. Ohio State’s Cultures of the Anthropecene working group, part of the Humanities Institute, is the event’s host.
Günel is the author of a new book, scheduled to be published next year by Duke University Press, that carries the same title as her lecture. She is an assistant professor in Arizona’s School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies.
The event flyer says that in 2006, the city of Abu Dhabi, capital of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, “launched an ambitious project to construct the world’s first ‘zero-carbon’ city: Masdar City.” Günel’s talk, the flyer says, will investigate “the construction of renewable energy and clean technology infrastructures … as the era of abundant oil supplies comes to an end.”