For in-person attendance (general public welcome), complete this form to RSVP. If you do not have an active Columbia ID card, please RSVP before noon on Monday November 2 - you will receive an email from Columbia University Public Safety containing a QR code, which you will be asked to present along with a matching ID at campus gates. Please allow a few extra minutes to pass through campus security. Please note: 300S Buell Hall is reached by three flights of stairs; there is no elevator in the building.

For virtual attendance, register for the webinar here. 

The Encounters Series: “American Environmental Machines, 1500-2026”
November 5, 2026, 12 pm EST 
300S Buell Hall and online 

John Lopez (UC Davis) 
John Davis (OSU)
A response by Frederik Braüner (Buell Fellow)

Human efforts to engineer ecologies and landscapes in the Americas have long required massive amounts of labor and machinery. John López tracks the import of Dutch flood-control techniques to Renaissance Mexico City, where they faced the aquatic consciousness of Aztec Tenochtitlán. John Davis uncovers an unrealized project to redesign the American landscape after Reconstruction, leveraging the US Army Corps of Engineers to produce the largest ever swath of agricultural land reclaimed for freedpeople. Frederik Braüner will give a response.