articles and News
January 10, 2022
As the Hydrocarbon Era Comes to an End, We Need a New Focus for EconomicsBart Hawkins Kreps and Clifford W. Cobb
A new book edited by Bart Hawkins Kreps and Clifford W. Cobb explores the collective transformations that will need to take place in a post-fossil fuel, post-economic growth era.
December 20, 2021
Kazim Ali and Robert Boschman in ConversationKazim Ali, Robert Boschman, Imre Szeman, and Caleb Wellum
In their astonishing memoirs, published only weeks apart, Kazim Ali and Robert Boschman explore how their personal and family stories overlap with histories of violence, colonialism, indigenous dispossession, and energy development in Western Canada. In Fall 2021, Boschman and Ali sat down with Energy Humanities editors to discuss the resonances between their narratives and the themes that unite them. The conversation that followed was an intimate and affecting dialogue between two men wrestling with the past.
December 10, 2021
Changing the Conversation on Energy at the Centre for Energy EthicsMette M. High
The Centre for Energy Ethics (CEE) at the University of St. Andrews is a new and dynamic hub for interdisciplinary research and discussion about energy. The CEE's founding director, social anthropologist Dr. Mette High, explains the genesis of the centre and the "analytical open-mindedness" that informs its approach to changing how we talk about energy.
October 26, 2021
Rare Seeds: How Venezuelan Artists are Breaking the Spell of OilPenélope Plaza
Venezuela has a long and complicated relationship with oil marked by cycles of hope and despair. Penélope Plaza of the University of Reading explores how three Venezuelan artists are working to break the spell of oil and help set the country on a new path.
August 23, 2021
Helios 3: Rebecca Sharp's Rough CurrencyRebecca Sharp, Imre Szeman, and Caleb Wellum
Helios is a new interview series about cutting edge EH research and the creative processes that bring it to life. Our third installment features Rebecca Sharp, a poet and playwright whose new collection, Rough Currency, explores our individual and collection entanglements with fossil fuels with an eye for the mythic and the magical.
August 9, 2021
The Religious Dimensions of WildfireDarren Fleet
What does religion have to do with climate change? For writer and artist Darren Fleet, the wildfires raging across Western Canada evoke the shared vocabulary of religion and climate change politics, and the urgent need to think seriously about the 'spiritual work' of energy transition and energy justice.
July 27, 2021
Canadian Refinery Workers Face an Unjust TransitionEmily Eaton, Andrew Stevens, and Sean Tucker
Amid growing calls for a worldwide energy transition, Emily Eaton, Andrew Stevens, and Sean Tucker highlight the possibility of an unjust transition, particularly for workers. Their research on the struggle of oil refinery workers in Regina, Saskatchewan, demonstrates that a just transition will only happen if people fight for it.
July 13, 2021
Helios 2: Anne Pasek on Changing Methods in a Changing ClimateAnne Pasek and Caleb Wellum
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.
June 14, 2021
Line 5: Dismantling as World-BuildingJeffrey Insko
Every day, up to 540,000 barrels of natural gas liquids and crude oil flow under the Great Lakes in the Enbridge Line 5 pipline connecting Western Canada to Eastern Canada. Jeffrey Insko--energy humanities scholar and Michigan resident--explains why a grassroots coalition of indigenous groups, politicians, environmentalists, and other concerned citizens wants the pipeline shut down, as well as what makes this pipline battle different.
June 7, 2021
Making Poetry with the “Production Language” of Petrochemical IndustryMax Karpinski
There is a growing body of Canadian ecopoetry that takes as its subject the links between oil, land, and colonialism. Poetry scholar Max Karpinski has studied these poets and explains how one of them--Lesley Battler--subtly reuses the bland terminology of the petrochemical industry to create poetic insights into our fossil-fueled condition.
May 25, 2021
Fieldwork in the Energy HumanitiesBrent Ryan Bellamy
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.