In the first installment in our series of essays on the impact of Timothy Mitchell's "Carbon Democracy," political scientist Cara Daggett explores why the book works so well in the classroom. Carbon Democracy, Daggett notes, upends influential American mythologies using a writing and analytical style that helps readers see that what we took to be natural fact is indeed contingent and contestable. Students find these moments just as intellectually invigorating as their professors do.
Helios is a new interview series about cutting edge EH research and the creative processes that bring it to life. Our second installment features Anne Pasek, a Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture, and the Environment whose research aims to reshape our understanding of carbon, the Internet, and how humanities scholars think about and do research in a warming world.
Brent Ryan Bellamy explores what it means to do fieldwork in the energy humanities classroom and reflects on how an "oil inventory" assignment can reorient how students see literature, themselves, and the world.
Researcher Sydney Hart explains his web-based project to scrutinize the flight networks that support the operations of some of the world's largest gold mining companies. Rather than "flight shaming" individuals, "Mining Maps" shines a light on corporate responsibility for climate change.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education in the United States. Millions of students and faculty have been forced to meet online using digital platforms like Zoom. Literature professor Stacey Balkan argues that Zoom education should not be considered a new normal for the sake of students, faculty, and the planet.
Despite a recent surge in youth climate activism around the world, climate-related topics remain marginal in formal education in many countries. A team of researchers created the International Youth Deliberation on Energy Futures to fill the gap. Lynette Shultz and Carrie Karsgaard explain what they were up to, and how the students responded.
Casey Williams provides a definition and overview of the Energy Humanities. It is a field of studies that attends to the ways energy resources, systems, and use patterns shape the material, social, and cultural conditions of modern life. Understanding what it means to live in a fossil-fueled world—at a moment when planetary warming compels a transition away from fossil energy—is its chief task. What new habits, values, desires, and forms of life and art might obtain in a world “after oil”?
Developed by the Transitions in Energy, Culture, and Society (TECS) project and the Petrocultures Research Group, energy humanities features commentary on current developments in energy and the environment, announcements and news items, and video interviews with influential and emerging voices on energy & society. This site gathers some of the most exciting and important insights humanities researchers provide about the social nature of our environmental crises.
