Teaching Energy Humanities

Humanists interpret systems of energy production through literature

The field of energy humanities seeks to understand the interrelationships between our currently dominant oil-based energy systems and human cultural expressions. Considering how questions of energy—its production, distribution, and use—are always already questions of ethics, identity, narrative, and community, energy humanities examines existing petrocultures and envisions just and sustainable futures.

This volume will help instructors teach students how literature reflects the hidden infrastructure and costs of energy production, revealing the connection between historical and contemporary forms of extractivism. The range is broad, covering texts from the nineteenth century to the present and including topics from whale hunting and coal mining to oil drilling and lithium mining. The essays demonstrate the lingering imperial logics of resource extraction and the obfuscation of labor in capitalist energy systems. They describe teaching methods for place-based learning and online spaces and include important reflections on the discipline by some of its foundational scholars.

This volume contains discussion of Mette Marit Bølstad, Lykkeland (State of Happiness); Patrick Chamoiseau, Slave Old Man; Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions; Eliza Griswold, Amity and Prosperity; Jennifer Haigh, Heat and Light; Stuart Hall, "Encoding, Decoding"; Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Birth-mark" and "The Custom-House"; William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes; Julia Kasdorf and Steven Rubin, Shale Play; Salvatore Mancini, Narragansett Electric Co., Providence; Imbolo Mbue, How Beautiful We Were; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin.