“Ottoman Infrastructures of the Saudi Hydro-State: The Technopolitics of Pilgrimage and Potable Water in the Hijaz,” an article written by Michael Chris Low, associate professor of history, was selected for the 2016 Alice Hamilton Prize from the American Society for Environmental History. The article was published in Comparative Studies in Society and History in October 2015.
The award recognizes the best environmental history article published outside of the journal Environmental History. The Alice Hamilton Prize is among the Association of American University Press’ list of prestigious awards in the arts and humanities.
Low will receive the distinguished award at the American Society for Environmental History awards banquet on April 2 in Seattle, Washington.
Low specializes in Late Ottoman, Modern Middle Eastern, and Environmental History. He recently completed his dissertation at Columbia University and is currently working on a book manuscript, “The Mechanics of Mecca: The Technopolitics of the Late Ottoman Hijaz and the Colonial Hajj.” Drawing on Ottoman and British archival sources as well as published materials in Arabic and modern Turkish, Professor Low’s project analyzes how the Hijaz and the steamship-era pilgrimage to Mecca simultaneously became objects of Ottoman modernization, global public health, international law, and inter-imperial competition during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.