Trace Material Awarded NEH Grant

Last winter HML worked on a new grant application. We were deep into the production of the first season of our podcast and realized that we needed to raise money to help fund the project if we wanted to create season two. As you might know if you follow any of our work, the Lab has an eclectic approach to materials. We want to know more about that carpet on your floor than just the colorways or texture of the product. We take deep dives into why we use carpets, their chemical content, and how we can think differently about what we sink our feet into. So we wrote an application for a National Endowment for Humanities grant and to our surprise, this August it was announced that Parsons Healthy Materials Lab’s podcast, Trace Material, was awarded an NEH grant to create its second season. The $200,000 grant will fund a season-long exploration into the social history of plastics. HML’s aim has always been to explore the intersection of our lives and the lives of the materials that surround us and in the podcast, we take a deep dive into one material each season. In season one, we delved into hemp.

In the United States, hemp is currently experiencing a boom since its federal legalization in 2018. Prior to that, it hadn’t been farmed over eighty years. We interviewed several farmers who spoke about the material knowledge that was lost because of those decades that hemp could not be planted. Familiarity and know-how were forgotten. Farmers didn’t know which seeds to choose, how deep to plant them, or what to use to harvest the plants.

Trace Material dove into those discussions, but we also spoke to lawmakers and journalists about the current hemp market and how hemp can be a tool that is used for social and environmental justice. Hemp didn’t just pop into existence in 2018, and early episodes of Trace Material cover the painful history of hemp and the other varieties of the cannabis plant. Before the Civil War, hemp had a long history in the United States of being farmed by enslaved people on large industrial plantations. The hemp market was deeply entrenched in the practice of slavery. Knowing hemp’s history, and that it now has a wide-open future, Trace Material sought to ask questions about how it’s intersecting with our lives now, and how it might work to repair some of the harm done in the past. All of season one’s episodes can be found here.

Building off the deep historical and cultural investigation of hemp, Trace Material sought funding to create season two, which will focus on plastics. In the post-War years, the United States has become a global military leader, a factory of cultural exports, and developed a culture of disposability. Although much has been written and studied about America’s rapid rise as a global leader, not many have studied the past seventy-five years through the lens of plastic. We will bring together diverse perspectives to tell the complex and nuanced story of plastics in the US. In each episode, we will use a specific plastic object to explore stories of American society and culture. Through objects like the Tupperware container and the microwave, we will investigate how plastic products have interacted with women’s lives. Can products be “feminist?” When products are marketed towards women, what kind of women are advertisers imagining and who are they excluding? When we talk about the early plastic company Bakelike or the PVC pipe we will talk about how corporations and consumerism have developed these products, and how these advancements have historically pursued profit without considering human health. And finally, we’ll investigate what is happening now with plant-based plastics, along the way considering how plastics have long been part of what America imagines as “the future.” The story of plastics isn’t dissimilar from the story of America itself: it is one of innovation, influence, and unfettered growth.

Trace Material is honored to join organizations like PBS and NPR as a recipient of NEH’s Media Production Grants. NEH has a long history of funding deep historical research that has been transformational in the way the American public views its own history, and we hope our listeners will change the way they look at a material that is currently covering our world. Tune in in 2021 to uncover the world of plastic.