College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Lecture Series: Our Microbial Lives: A Manifesto Against Eradication

Award winning author and historian Dr. Victoria Lee, Associate Professor, Department of History, Ohio University, will give the second lecture in the College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Lecture series. Her title is “Our Microbial Lives: A Manifesto Against Eradication” on November 19, 2025. Her lecture considers the growing recognition in the twenty-first century of our dependence on microbes for virtually every aspect of the way we live, including how we grow our food, heal our bodies, and sustain our environment. Yet, microbes are different from other targets of conservation, such as butterflies and elephants: We feel differently about them. Lee traces the nature of microbial charisma as it has changed between efforts toward global eradication of microbial pathogens such as smallpox in the 1970s and the foregrounding of microbes as the life support system of the planet in climate policy after the 2000s. Drawing on research from her award-winning book, The Arts of the Microbial World: Fermentation Science in Twentieth-Century Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2021), she explores how humans have engaged with charismatic microbes in brewing and food production, industrial chemistry, and drug discovery. Lee invites us to rethink the modern history of human relationships with microbes in light of calls to foster a greater sense of kinship with nonhuman organisms toward a more sustainable future. In particular, she challenges us to consider alternatives to approaches dominated by the goal of absolute control or eradication, in line with the gradual discovery that we live inherently microbial lives.