Articles

In this Author’s Note, Josephine Taylor outlines the intellectual and ethical foundations of her recent book, The Nonhuman Narratives of Energy, tracing how animal life has been rendered absent within dominant energy narratives. Drawing on animal studies, energy humanities, and science fiction, she argues for an ethics of witnessing multispecies vulnerability as a way to rethink extraction, petroculture, and the possibilities of a world after oil.

Joel Duncan turns to Gary Snyder’s Turtle Island to think through life within petromodernity. Centering on “Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier Than Students of Zen,” Duncan's essay, like his new book (Poetic Drive), treats poetry as a site of attention to entangled, fossil-fueled life, where responsibility and the possibility of change emerge from sustained presence rather than distance.

Mariel Kieval analyzes Kazakhstan’s state museums as cultural sites where fossil fuels continue to structure national identity, even as the government promotes a green transition. Drawing on fieldwork across multiple cities, the piece shows how exhibitions and artworks valorize oil while sidelining labor unrest and environmental harm, revealing how energy transition remains culturally unresolved.

Nate Otjen introduces Season 2 of the "Mining for the Climate" podcast and expands on its central idea of the “energy colony.” Focusing on lithium mining in Nevada’s McDermitt Caldera, he traces how green energy projects reproduce older extractive and colonial logics, reshaping relations among land, infrastructure, and life.