2025-2026 Academic Catalog

Jun 28, 2025

2025-2026 Academic Catalog

ENG 223 - Cultures of Energy: Nature, Power, Aesthetics

What does it mean to understand cultural production-including selfhood and identity-through the lens of energy, whether in the era of wood, tallow, coal, whale oil, gasoline, atomic power, among other energy sources? As one commentator states, `energy enables; different forms of energy enable differently.’ This course offers an integrated environmental humanities approach to the contemporary politics and culture of energy. The environmental humanities signals a growing recognition that issues pertaining to environmental change represent social and human challenges, rather than strictly environmental ones. Such an approach helps to direct attention to the shifting imbrications of nature, ecology, and species-being in the era of the Anthropocene, and the way these imbrications invoke different engagements with energy. Seen perhaps especially with fossil fuels, ‘energy’ is an increasingly contested terrain of contemporary life. By iteratively unpacking the concept, the course will allow students to grasp how ways of being, cultural orientations, and political forms depend upon and contribute to various contemporary energy realities (from solar and wind to extractivism and democracy). As an interdisciplinary course, readings will be drawn from literary, historical and adjacent fields. Topics to be considered include: the ethics and politics of energy; steam power and imperialism; carbon democracy; energy transition; the aesthetics and representation of petrocultures; fossil fascism; extractives; energies in visual and other arts. For English majors, this course satisfies the D-3 or E requirement but cannot double count.

Prerequisites: GEOG 017; or one previous course in literary studies (ENG 100-299)

Course Designation/Attribute: GP

Anticipated Terms Offered: Biannually