Despite the flames of record-breaking temperatures licking at our feet, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of environmental overheating. What acquired habits and conveniences allow us to turn a blind eye with an air of detachment? This talk draws from the recently published Heat, A History (University of California Press, 2024) and examines examples from the Middle Eastern hotspot. It explores how scientific approaches to measuring heat and contemporary acclimatization techniques have dulled our sensitivity to climate change and stripped global warming of its political dimensions, despite the underlying ethnic, class, and gender tensions it exacerbates.

On Barak, professor at Tel Aviv University, is a social and cultural historian of science and technology in non-Western settings. In recent years he has specialized in the history and current politics of the climate crisis in the Middle East and the Global South. In addition to his latest book Heat, A History, he has written several other books, including Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization (2020) and On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt (2013).