Energy Humanities: A Microseminar

Energy Humanities is a vibrant interdisciplinary field that studies the way that energy regimes are woven throughout human cultures, societies, and artforms. Energy humanists explore the cultural and ecological impacts of different energy systems, but also the imaginaries that energy regimes enable or inhibit, as well as the kinds of emotions, affective states, and modes of sociality that different energy regimes depend on and make possible. This micoseminar, which is linked to Stephanie LeMenager's Katz lecture, will offer an introduction to energy humanities as a field and provide a chance to consider energy's affordances and limitations as a category through which to pursue humanistic inquiry. Our central text will be LeMenager's Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century (Oxford 2013), which we will pair with other significant work in the field.

Students will be expected to attend three sessions in advance of LeMenager's visit as well as the Katz Lecture (April 28 6:30 pm), a colloquium on energy humanities (April 29th 3:30pm), and a roundtable (April 30th 6:30 pm) on the adjacent field of "Fire Humanities" featuring LeMenager along with other visiting scholars and artists.