Publication date:
June 26, 2025
This podcast was created and researched by me, Eira Tansey, founder and manager of the archival consulting company Memory Rising. The theme music was created by Bright Archives, an independent archival production house.
Episode listening links:
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Micah’s upcoming book: The Mechanized Landscape: Statecraft and Environment in the Tennessee Valley by Micah Rutenberg and Avigail Sachs
Micah’s Instagram: @buckminister_mueller
Transcript:
Welcome to No Time for Fear, the New Deal History Podcast, where we examine how the United States’ ambitious response to the Great Depression can provide a blueprint for improving Americans’ lives nearly a century later. Today we’re talking with Micah Rutenberg, who is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I found Micah’s work a few months ago when I began researching the political geography of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and he joined me to talk about energy commons, maps, and his upcoming co-authored book about the TVA. One of my goals for the podcast has been to have interviews with others who are also interested in the history and legacy of the New Deal, and it was a lot of fun to talk with Micah about his perspectives.
[INTERVIEW]
Eira:
Micah, thank you so much for joining us today. As one of the opening questions for our guests, I want to ask you if you can share how you first became interested in the New Deal.
Micah:
First of all, thanks for having me, and I did also want to say before I start that I’ve listened to your podcast, and I do think it’s a really great podcast. I’ve been studying the TVA for quite a while now, and I really appreciate how you get so much nuance and detail in a really small package. So I just wanted to start with that.
But in terms of how I got interested in the New Deal, I like maybe a lot of the public had a very general idea of what it was, and my knowledge was pretty much that it’s a collection of policies that made up the first 100 days and then the second 100 days of FDR’s presidency and stuff like that. But I didn’t really have a good sense of what the implications of that were beyond these policies.
But then when I moved to Knoxville in 2016, I was pretty immediately struck by how visible and tangible the effects of the New Deal are. And that’s because in Tennessee, we’re in the Tennessee Valley, which is known for the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is this iconic New Deal agency that you’ve been talking about. And here we have their headquarters located in Knoxville. But then when you drive around, you see the kind of physical evidence of that. And I came to understand that this wasn’t just a collection of policies. It was actually this really kind of not just like broad spanning thing, but it was also this extremely organized thing that had real, legible, noticeable impacts in the physical environment.
And when you drive around here, it’s pretty amazing because just within a 30 mile radius of Knoxville, there are five hydroelectric dams that were built by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 30s and 40s alone. And so those dams that they built come along with also these really amazingly designed landscapes. So as an architect living in this environment, I wanted to know more about the TVA system of dams and how they transformed, like how these transformations happened and what they were thinking about.
The other question I was really interested in in terms of the built environment is just like questions of infrastructure and how that also shapes the environment in ways that we don’t always necessarily think about or know about, how that transformed geography and then also like how that makes us modern. And then, of course, as you know, coming from a design background and being in a college of architecture and design, I was really just interested in the design of these things because they produce such a kind of spectacle. They draw people to them. They really did reshape people’s lives. And I was fascinated by just like the kind of design component of it, the way that you design an environment, what that means, what the implications are.
And I think, you know, that was probably my starting point. But then I think like you, I probably was really curious about like how all of that became possible. And what made me want to get like really serious about it was just like, OK, this is pretty amazing. What does that say about what the role of government should and could be in creating an environment? And I think also like you, I had this question of like, what is this still possible today? Like what does that mean for us? So I was just curious.I just really wanted a better understanding of how it all happened, its context, and then the kind of inner workings of how it unfolded in time.
Eira:
Yeah, that question about is this possible again is something we’re going to get to a little bit later. I feel like my thoughts about that change on a daily basis, depending on what’s in the news.
In your 2024 article, Political Geographies of Rural Electrification, you use the phrase regional energy commons. And can you expand on what you mean by that phrase and why we should think of the Tennessee Valley Authority as creating an energy commons and not just as a power provider?
Micah:
So something that I find pretty interesting is that in the TVA Act itself, which is the legislation that created the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933, it lays out its legal structure, but it has this preamble in it that’s essentially a summary of what the Tennessee Valley Authority is and what it’s going to be. And this happens before it gets into any of the legal language. And it’s this really short, simple paragraph, but it lists the main goals. And those goals as listed are:
- The flood control of the Tennessee River.
- Reforestation.
- The proper use of marginal lands.
- To provide for agricultural and industrial development.
- Also for national defense.
And something that struck me is that what’s not listed there is the production of electricity, actually. That’s not in this summary. And so one thing that it points out is just that it wasn’t the main goal. It was actually intended to be a byproduct of all of these other things, at least initially, because eventually the Tennessee Valley Authority became a power provider. So it still exists today. And that’s essentially how it operates as a public utility. That was a byproduct of these other activities. And it did come to eventually underpin nearly everything that the TVA was doing in every facet of what they did, at least in the 1930s and 50s. But it was always in service of this broader, multifaceted social agenda, an environmental agenda that they had that was specifically them trying to serve the interests of the public on the whole.
And so it wasn’t always the case, but the idea was that everyone could have access to these resources that were managed by the TVA, which, of course, included electricity. And I think along with that, part of what the TVA was tasked with doing was to create a public sphere around these natural resources, not simply to provide them. So in other words, I would say it’s like their goal was to protect these natural resources of which energy was one of them, of course, and ensure that they would remain in the public domain and be used for the benefit of the public.
In the case of the TVA anyway, I think the energy as a commons came with all sorts of things around it and additional added benefits. So it was things like:
- Education and training.
- Access to technology.
- Financial assistance.
- Access to the outdoors.
- Civic and social spaces.
Eira:
Well, one of the things that also struck me from some of your other writing is the way you talk about geography and territory. So we often think of geographies as being defined by natural features such as rivers, political boundaries. And you’ve argued that the TVA’s approach to portraying infrastructure maps and electrical appliances also defined the geography of the Tennessee Valley, which I think you alluded to a little bit when you talked about moving to Knoxville.
So what can we learn from thinking about geography in this more expansive way, and particularly as it relates in terms of transitioning to a new energy economy?
Micah:
Yeah, the TVA literally redrew the map, so to speak. And I’m also really interested in how maps and design come together. That’s a lot of my interest and a lot of work that I do. But I think there’s one thing that I’ve always found pretty compelling and interesting about the TVA that was doing, and it actually builds off of your other question a bit, having to do with energy commons. So I’ll just go back to that quickly because I think it’s important to note that the energy commons also came with a new way that Valley residents were organized. And because the TVA didn’t sell electricity directly to individuals, instead what they did was they allowed people to access their energy through cooperatives in which farmers would form these collectives to solicitenergy from the TVA. And these were really important components of the TVA’s, what they called the grassroots ideal. So this kind of bottom-up sort of form of government, governance. And I point this out because the cooperatives didn’t necessarily follow the traditional political boundaries or the jurisdictions like towns or counties. Instead, they were just defined by like who was signing up to participate in these cooperatives and like who came together to do that. So this helped define local communities in a different way, in a new way that was outside of these kind of familiar jurisdictions. And the two things coexisted together, but again, it was this kind of literally redrawing of the map.
So when you see a kind of TVA map of the system, you start to see these cooperatives emerging as kind of geographic figures. And this has all kinds of repercussions for their social life as well, right, in terms of how community is created.
Now in terms of the question of the infrastructure maps and electrical appliances and how they also define geography, for me this has to do with how the TVA presented people with the system through the language and symbolism of infrastructure across scale specifically. So it’s like dealing with these two, like how do you get people to understand their household, the impact in their household, and then how do you also get them to understand that they’re part of this broad interconnected network that crosses seven states, that’s huge, right?
So on the one hand, the TVA had to contend with how you introduce people to an unfamiliar resource that they may not have encountered before and that they don’t necessarily know how to make use of. So in the case of electricity, it’s also not just that it’s new, it’s that you don’t see it also, but you only see its effects and you need an appliance to be able to use it. So that’s different than say like a river, right? It’s a resource, water’s a resource, but you can see it. But at the same time, there’s this question of like how do you get people to understand where their electricity comes from? Again, unlike a river, you can’t see it and it takes a different way of thinking to understand it.
But also that by bringing it into their house, how do you get them to understand that they become part of this grid, as I was saying, and this sort of vast infrastructure of hydroelectric dams, substations, distribution lines, et cetera, et cetera, right? All this kind of physical stuff that was beginning to appear around them in their environment. And so the TVA had to address both of these scales, so the scale of the infrastructural system and then their individual home.
So the TVA created lots of maps of the electrical grid for public consumption. And so with these maps, it’s important to understand that it was truly a new language for people in the valley. So it’s not like Tennessee Valley farmers in the 20s and 30s before the TVA arrived had maps that were readily available or that they were even well-versed in necessarily how to read them. But those tools became really important as educational tools for the TVA that they used to give the public a way of visualizing and understanding their connection to this broader region and therefore to their geographic context as it’s defined by infrastructure.
Then on the other hand, there’s the appliances that I equate them a lot with dams kind of in miniature, right? Because they were these symbolic and affective tools. So by this time, appliances were designed to be sleek and had modern technological aesthetics associated with them, again, much like the dams did. And these appliances were, you know, they made electricity useful and they made people’s lives easier in certain ways, certainly.
And so the two factors together, the symbolism and utility of appliances provided people with a way of relating to the small scale of their individual environment and relating that small scale to the large scale of the system that they were seeing in maps. So it served as this kind of bridge or a conduit to understand that.
And so what I kind of argue is that it becomes a question of language in which the maps of the system and the appliances both serve as this kind of bridge for people to understand their place within this system that would otherwise be incomprehensible to them.
And I like this question of like what we can learn from these things. And so I think one of the things that we can learn perhaps is that infrastructure and the technologies that go along with it, that they do have a transformative impact on geographic space in a lot of ways.
And then in terms of this kind of idea about an energy transition, hopefully I can convey this idea that new forms of energy also bring along withthem the need for new language and a new way of thinking that has to be kind of multi-scalar. So in other words, it’s not enough to just say like here it is, use it. You have to consider the mechanisms by which people are going to accept and adopt the transition to new forms of energy. And maybe more importantly, you have to think about how people can participate in that and provide them with the language and the tools to do it.
Eira:
I think the question of appliances is so interesting, and it’s something that I want to get into additional episodes later in the season about, particularly because the gender dynamics of this is so fascinating. Some other New Deal scholars have talked about how in some of the rural electric cooperatives, it was often women who were the ones who were pushing the most for their husbands to sign up because the women were like, I do not want to deal with boiling water all the time for the irons, and for washing clothes.
And so I think it would be interesting. I’m sure you have a research pipeline that is very long, but I would love someone to do something related to mapping kinship networks and understanding if there’s sort of like how the gender dynamics within communities might have shaped the formation of rural electric cooperatives. I think that would be an incredible, like the feminist geographies of rural electric during the New Deal. Someone please write that.
Micah:
Yeah, yeah, that’s fascinating. And there’s some great photographic materials that show these cooperatives, and they have these big display windows, and they’re backlit with these giant refrigerators. And yeah, they were all staffed by women who were meant to educate housewives and such. Super interesting.
Eira:
Yeah, I think there were like appliance fairs, appliance exhibits that were very much targeting women to further some of the rural electrification and TVA aims.
All right. Well, you have a book co-authored with Avigail Sachs coming out later this year titled The Mechanized Landscape, Statecraft and Environments in the Tennessee Valley. And I would love to hear about your approach to archival research. You’ve mentioned the maps of TVA. It sounds like you probably had to do quite a bit of archival research, I’m guessing, for this book. So how has it informed writing your book? And I’d love to hear about some of your favorite finds or maybe things that you encountered that shifted your thinking during the course of writing this.
Micah:
Yeah, so of course, I have to give most of the credit for the archival research to Avigail because she’s the one who did the physical labor of being in the archive itself and digging through it. And then she would bring it back and we would go through it in a comfortable setting in a coffee shop or wherever we happened to be meeting that day.
But one thing about the archival research is that, or something about the book, is that we wanted it to be firmly grounded in the archival research and we wanted it to include historical text. But we also wanted to creatively explore the publishing medium and see what it would mean to foreground our research in a visual narrative and what does it mean to kind of provide a visual accounting of an archive.
So while the book has plenty of text that the general public can read and understand the history, it also brings together new maps and photographs as well. So Avigail is a really amazing photographer who spent several years photographing the region. So the photographs in the book are hers. And then I’m considered the mapping guy between us. So I have been producing lots of new maps. And so I’ve spent my time digitizing the unpublished maps that are in the TVA archives and using their geographic data and then producing new maps from those materials to narrate the research.
And so I think the book is meant to bring these two visual mediums together. Whereas the photographs are meant to give readers a kind of human perspective and understanding of what resulted from the TVA’s intervention. And the maps are meant to give a cartographic perspective of how those interventions unfolded spatially and temporally.
So I think, and at least I hope that the book provides an interesting way for the public to engage with that archival research. And I’ll just note really quickly too that one of our agendas was that the book could be read cover to cover or readers could just kind of drop in to a chapter or they could just flip through it and look at photos and drawings. So yeah, I was doing a ton of mapping and wrapping my brain around what that is. So in terms of like doing that, I think it’s a pretty, for me, it’s a pretty interesting research method and approach to the archive that I think it’s relatively underexplored and underdeveloped.
So you do see maps a lot in historical research. That’s not uncommon at all, but they’re usually recreations of existing maps. Like they just kind of redraw them. But I think maps have their own kind of textuality and that synthesizing and visualizing information spatially in different ways can yield insights that you don’t get usually just by like the written text or in just kind of recreations of maps.
But the other thing is that the TVA did, as I said earlier, they did make tons and tons of maps that were both for public consumption and also internal audiences. But what I found is that as like a kind of modern agency, they were generally trying to isolate and distill out specific information for a very specific purpose and agenda. So to me, when I would look at these maps, they felt like very partial and I wanted to get a more synthetic understanding of how different systems and things overlapped and different aspects came together. And that meant that I had to combine and overlay different kinds of information different ways. So it was like a tricky process.
And I geeked out also just around the aesthetic properties of the maps themselves, again, in the spirit that someone could have kind of opened the book and just like enjoy digging into a map that hopefully looks beautiful and is compelling visually. And then also it has these kind of layers of information. And I do think like I think a lot of insights and nuance came out of this process that was unique to mapping. And I think the structure of the book itself, even in its themes, are informed a lot by how we approach the making of the maps themselves.
And I think in terms of a kind of insight, one of those insights, I mean, one was frankly this kind of like how the cooperatives unfolded over time. Like that was definitely something that you read about and you understand the cooperatives textually, but then in the process of mapping, you know, in the book there’s, or we did this kind of sequence through several years showing the energy grid as it developed. And you see, you really do see spatially like how it started as this kind of fragmented piecemeal thing as people start sort of signing up and soliciting power, TVA power. And then eventually in the later years, I think there’s a map from 1947 in which you find like that’s the first appearance of what is still today the service provider area. And all those gaps are kind of filled up. And then the TVA shows up or at least their service provider area kind of shows up as a figure on the map.
The other thing I learned in my curiosity about that is that’s also disseminated globally as it turns out, like that new kind of geographic figure, the Tennessee River watershed starts to appear on maps, you know, that were meant for global audiences. And so there’s like you not only see this kind of temporal evolution of this thing, but you also see how that truly was important and became baked into how people thought about the agency.
Eira:
That’s really interesting to hear the international sort of promotion of that because that tracks so much with how the TVA was positioning itself pretty early in its history and entertaining all of these groups of visitors from around the world. And I think in Democracy on the March, David Lilienthal talks quite a bit about TVA as being sort of this model for the rest of the world. And David Lilienthal himself was an advisor to all of these watershed development projects in other parts of the world.
So, yeah, I am so excited for this book because I have my background and my undergrads in human geography. So I was taught a lot about thinking about maps and what maps convey and the symbolism embedded in maps. So, and also as a professional archivist, this is very exciting. So I’m super excited for this book.
All right. So now I want to echo back to something we were talking about earlier, which is how muchis possible today. And of course, I think what’s happening in Washington, D.C.? It’s just chaos. So we’re going to think about parallel realities, if you would, which is that if New Deal era policies were once again politically viable, which program or initiative would you most want to see revived or what brand new policy in the spirit of the New Deal would you propose?
Micah:
That’s a really great question and also a really hard one because of this. Like I said earlier, what I learned is that it’s not actually just a bunch of individual policies that make it work. It’s this broad ecosystem of action and it’s also an integrative approach that made progressive change possible during the New Deal.
And so it’s like, how do you think about one thing? But I think there’s an aspect of the TVA that I especially admire, which I think is pretty relevant today as well, is that as an agency, they were rooted in the management and conservation of natural resources. So they were primarily concerned with the environment on the whole and in several facets of what environment would mean to people, to governance, to the administration of land, to all kinds of things, to people’s social life, etc.
And while they wanted people to use natural resources and benefit from them economically, they were also really clear about the fact that resources are finite and that they need to be protected from individual interests and irresponsible use.
And I also find that the TVA’s role in this is pretty compelling because their approach also integrated the conservation of resources with supporting the rural and agricultural environment. So it wasn’t just about powering farms. They also had a really robust reforestation and erosion control program to improve soil conditions.
And they also created a really well-organized network of experimentation and demonstration farms that were just valley farmers. And those were used to test new farming methods and techniques. They were used to test new fertilizers. And they created a really extensive network of these demonstration farms and a really robust program around them.
And what I think is important to note is that these farms that were used for experimentation, one, they were also like farmers coming to the TVA and saying like, yes, we would like to participate in this. We can see what the benefit would be for us. But one thing to note is that they weren’t just about creating new knowledge and expertise, which is hugely important, but it was also that they would then disseminate it back to the public and they would use it to educate the public and improve their conditions.
So I think this is something we can learn from them that is kind of a theme for me is that they were really, really good at producing knowledge and expertise. But more importantly, they were really good at finding ways to get that knowledge and expertise back into the hands of the public.
So if it’s not just like a single policy or program, then I think it’s also like just the way that a government agency can work and that they can create or that they perhaps should create not-for-profit knowledge and expertise that belongs to the public domain and helps to reinforce it. So that’s maybe what I would love to see again.
Eira:
Me too, especially when we’re seeing what’s happening, attacks on federal expertise and all of the knowledge that has built up in federal agencies. So quite a long time.
All right. Well, Micah, thank you for being here with us today on the podcast. Can you tell listeners where to follow your work if they want to learn more?
Micah:
Yeah. So I have a very searchable name as it turns out. I’m like one of… I might be one of one. I’m not totally sure about that. But if you search my name on Google, you’ll find all kinds of things I’ve done. But as you mentioned, we also do have a book coming out. So look forward to that. And then my main thing is Instagram. And so you can follow me at Buckminster Mueller. And I’ll trust you, Eira. Hopefully you can write that out because it’s not one that’s super easy to remember or spell out.
Eira:
It will be in the show notes.
Thanks again, Micah. And this was really great. And I’m, again, so excited for your book and happy to have you on today.
Micah:
Yes. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a lovely conversation.
[OUTRO]
Thank you for listening to this episode. And thanks to Micah for being the first guest on the show. You can find links to his work
If you like what you hear and want to support the work that goes into making this podcast, please visit notimeforfear.net. Please share this episode with a friend and consider making a donation if you’re in a position to do so, so that I can keep making the show.
A couple of our early listeners have already made donations. Thank you so much to Lee and Arian for their generosity.
This podcast was created and researched by me, Eira Tansey, founder and manager of the archival consulting company Memory Rising. The theme music was created by Bright Archives, an independent archival production house.
I’ll see you next month when we’re back to talk more about the history of the New Deal.