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2016-17: Energy

In this series of linked lectures, readings, workshops, and discussions we will focus on the concept of energy. We will explore major contemporary approaches to energy use, the environmental impact of energy, and our changing approaches to energy needs, conservation, and design. We will also hear from researchers in emerging fields such as Energy Humanities, who approach the critical questions of our relationship to materials, fuels, and resources as informed not just by science or policy but also by human cultures, traditions, and philosophies. In their interdisciplinary, critical, and historical perspectives about energy forms we discover the role the humanities and social sciences can play in informing policy and public awareness of our energy uses.

The Fall 2016 series featured

  • Karen Pinkus | Fuel: History of a Strange Concept
  • Lindsey Green-Simms | Cruising the Petro-state: Car Culture and Nigerian Cinema
  • Imre Szeman | After Oil: Transitioning to a New World of Energy

The Spring 2017 series featured

  • Evan Berry | Profane Energies/Sacred Narratives:
    On Religion and Environmentalism
  • Arielle Bernstein | The Energy of Objects:
    Loving and Loathing Our Material Things
  • Leslie Ries | Learning from Butterflies:
    Understanding and Predicting Butterfly Responses to a Warming Climate
  • Claire Brunel | Energy Policy Today:
    The Environment, the Economy, and Contemporary Politics

Abstract symbols relating to energy.

Fall 2016

Karen Pinkus聽|聽Fuel: History of a Strange ConceptSeptember 26, 2016聽

What can critical theory, literature, and film help us understand about fuel?

In this talk, professor Pinkus will discuss the concept of fuel in human culture and philosophy, from antiquity to the present day.

Part of her new book,听Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary聽(University of Minnesota Press, 2016), the talk examines different types of fuel, from everyday fossil and renewable fuels to fantastical fuels found in science fiction and speculative literature. This work was inspired by professor Pinkus鈥 concern about the environment, and her sense that that the humanities can bring a critical research component to solving the problems of climate change.

Pinkus uses tools from the humanities, such as critical theory, philosophy, and literary analysis, to separate fuel from energy, and to examine our relationship with fuel itself. Is fuel a form of pure potentiality, that is, power, but before it is used (up)? She proposes that fuels are materials that have 鈥渧ery complex relationships with our own thought structures, fantasies, narratives, or ways of being in the world.鈥

Karen Pinkus is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, and a member of the Climate Change Focus Group. She has published many articles on topics ranging from literary theory and the internal combustion engine to the temporality of carbon management. Professor Pinkus聽has published widely in Italian culture, literary theory, cinema, visual theory, and environmental theory. Aside from Italian she also works with French, Latin, German, Spanish, and is learning Swedish.

She has several ongoing research projects:
1) a new book tentatively titled聽Autonomia/ Automata: Machines for Writing, Laboring and Thinking in 1960s Italy, that explores issues around labor, automation and repetition in Italian art, literature, design, and film of the 60s. In part, this work is in dialogue with contemporary Italian thought, especially as regards the question of the Autonomia movement, the refusal to work, and the question of wages.

2) Her new book聽Fuel聽(November 2016) thinks about issues crucial to climate change by arguing for a separation of fuel (perhaps understood as potentiality, or聽dynamis, to use the Aristotelian term) from energy as a system of power (actuality, use).聽聽Fuel聽follows a series of literary, filmic, and critical texts through the form of a dictionary (from 鈥渁ir鈥 to 鈥渮yklon D鈥).聽聽Fuel聽engages with literature, art and critical theory as they are central to analogy and in turn, to fuel itself.

For about the past ten years, most of her work has been directed toward thinking about the humanities in relation to climate change. Professor Pinkus is on the editorial boards of聽diacritics听补苍诲听World Picture Journal.听贵辞谤听diacritics, she edited a special issue on climate change criticism (43.1), thirty years on from the influential issue on nuclear criticism.


Lindsey Green-Simms | Cruising the Petro-state:
Car Culture and Nigerian Cinema
November 2, 2016

This talk examined聽car culture and the status of the private automobile in post oil-boom Nigeria by reading popular video films that are a part of the now-famous 鈥淣ollywood鈥 industry. In particular, it will discuss how luxury cars like the Hummer or Mercedes Benz are paradigmatic and contradictory objects through which one can assess both the pleasures and anxieties of global modernity in Nigeria. Though these cars are highly coveted objects, typically filmed driving down paved roads in posh neighborhoods, they are often a sign of wealth that is acquired through criminality, witchcraft, magic, or fraud. Any discussion of car culture therefore requires an engagement with the complexities of the moral economy of Nigeria and assessment of what it means to be a capitalist consumer in a highly stratified oil-producing country.

Lindsey Green-Simms鈥 teaching and research focuses on African and post-colonial film and literature. Her particular interests include globalization, technology, gender and sexuality studies, and Nollywood video-film production. Professor Green-Simms鈥 forthcoming book,听Postcolonial Automobility: Cars, Cultural Production, and Global Mobility in West Africa, examines how the contradictions of globalization are embedded in the commodity of the automobile and in the ideals of automobility. She is also working on a second book, provisionally titled聽Unbelonging Bodies: Same-Sex Sexualities and African Screen Media. Professor Green-Simms completed her doctorate in Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, and has previously taught at Duke University, where she was a postdoctoral fellow in Women鈥檚 Studies, as well as at the College of Charleston. She has published articles in聽Camera Obscura,听transition,听Journal of African Cinemas, and聽Journal of Postcolonial Writing聽and has book chapters in聽Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century聽(Ohio U. Press) and聽Indiscretions: At the Intersection of Queer and Postcolonial Theory聽(Rodopi Press).


Imre Szeman | After Oil: Transitioning to a New World of EnergyNovember 16, 2016聽

How can we imagine a transition to new energy sources? Join us for a lecture by Professor聽Imre Szeman聽(University of Alberta) on the way interdisciplinary perspectives can inform our understanding of energy uses and forms. Drawing from his work in the field of Energy Humanities, Professor Szeman will explore the social, cultural, and political changes needed to make possible a full-scale transition from fossil fuels to new forms of energy.

Imre Szeman is Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies and Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, and Adjunct Professor of interdisciplinary Studies at聽OCAD聽University. He conducts research on and teaches in the areas of energy and environmental studies, literary and cultural theory, social and political philosophy (esp. 19th and 20th left theory, globalization and nationalism), and Canadian studies.聽Szeman is the recipient of the John Polanyi Prize in Literature (2000), the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award (2003), the Scotiabank-AUCC聽Award for Excellence in Internationalization (2004), an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (2005-7), the President鈥檚 Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision at McMaster University (2008), a Killam Annual Professorship (2013), and the J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research (2015), the U of Alberta鈥檚 most prestigious research award that recognizes research excellence in humanities, social sciences, law, education and fine arts. He is the founder of the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies and a founding member of the 猫咪社区app Cultural Studies Association. He is currently finishing up work on聽On Empty: The Cultural Politics of Oil.

Spring 2017

Evan Berry | Profane Energies/Sacred Narratives:
On Religion and Environmentalism
February 15, 2016

In the run up to COP21, the international convening that produced the Paris Agreement on climate change, religious leaders and indigenous communities were important contributors in framing a global moral call to action. Yet hardly one year later, climate politics again seem intractable; many religious groups, especially here in the United States, remain skeptical about climate science. In this talk, professor Berry draws from his work on the relationship between nature and religious thought in order to elucidate recent cultural and political debates.

Evan Berry is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at 猫咪社区app University and Co-Director of the Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs master鈥檚 program. His research examines the intersections among religion, globalization, and climate change, and seeks to advance knowledge about the role of religious actors in contemporary environmental controversy. Beginning with the premise that religion and religious ideas serve to locate human beings in the natural order, his scholarship concentrates on the cultural particularities of environmental ethics鈥攖he ways that different religious perspectives generate divergent ecological orientations. Pursuing these questions through both ethnographic research and philosophical reflection, his current work includes a study of religious civil society groups actively engaged with the challenge of climate change. His book, Devoted to Nature: The Religious Roots of 猫咪社区app Environmentalism, was recently published by the University of California Press.


Arielle Bernstein | The Energy of Objects:
Loving and Loathing Our Material ThingsMarch 1, 2017

In this engaging and creative discussion, writer and cultural critic Arielle Bernstein explores the emotional power of objects, from everyday things to precious mementos and historical documents.

Arielle Bernstein learned the value of preserving material things from her Cuban-Jewish mother, who grew up under Fidel Castro, and whose own parents had immigrated from to Havana from Poland to escape the Holocaust. Clutter was seen as a source of warmth and comfort, from the cans of Caf茅 Bustelo that her mother would save for storage growing up, to the useful gifts of socks, toothbrushes, and jars of peanut butter, that her parents still bring her when they come to visit. Yet the messages she received from mainstream 猫咪社区app culture taught her a different narrative, one in which clutter was seen as a source of shame, rather than joy. From advertisements that tell consumers they鈥檒l be happier abandoning their old shoes, handbags, and electronics for the latest trend, to salacious shows like Hoarders that emphasize the way that unchecked keeping can manifest as mental illness, to spring cleaning articles in magazines that encourage readers to purge many of the same items they sold them over Christmas, 猫咪社区app culture is consumed by both the allure and danger of material possessions.

In her book-in-progress Chasing Empty-An 猫咪社区app History of Loving and Loathing Our Material Things, Bernstein argues that today鈥檚 minimalist trend has been co-opted into just the latest consumer trend, one that sells products meant to replace old things with new ones, rather than simply scale back. While Marie Kondo and many other online minimalist gurus earnestly urge consumers to change their attitude towards material things, the advent of new minimalist products, from tiny houses, to minimalist shoes, to minimalist toothbrushes, has transformed minimalism into yet another consumable product.

This talk will offer a rich and compassionate look at the challenges of deciding which things to keep and which things to discard, and how the way in which minimalism has been co-opted by consumer culture ends up obscuring the power of preserving and valuing the things we choose to keep.

Arielle Bernstein is a writer, professor, and cultural critic who lives in Washington, DC and has been teaching in AU鈥檚 Writing Studies Program since 2008. Her work has been featured in聽聽, Slate Magazine, Salon, and The Rumpus, among other publications. She is represented by Christopher Rhodes at The Stuart Agency.


Leslie Ries | Learning from Butterflies: Understanding and Predicting Butterfly Responses to a Warming ClimateMarch 29, 2017聽

In this engaging talk, professor Leslie Ries (Department of Biology, Georgetown University) will discuss how the life and migration patterns of monarch butterflies reveal a complex response to our warming world. Using research from professional biologists but also measurements and observations from citizen scientists, professor Ries discusses new uses for the large amounts of data we can gather about insects and other animals.

Leslie Ries is the Project Director of the North 猫咪社区app Butterfly Monitoring Network. Leslie鈥檚 background is in butterfly ecology and her interests are in using butterfly data to understand how ecological communities respond to climate and land-use change.

Ries is an ecologist who focuses on patterns at both medium and large scales. She has worked both in the fields of landscape ecology and biogeography with her focus mainly on butterflies. Over the last 10 years, she has shifted from a field approach to using large databases, mostly originating from citizen science monitoring networks. Citizen science greatly expands the scale at which we can collect data and thus explore problems and solutions that are increasingly global in nature.

Ries focuses on several facets of citizen-science, including the use of these data to answer large-scale ecological questions, especially those related to climate and land cover; developing statistical tools to extract the most robust information from the data; designing systems to support data management, visualization, and sharing; and developing 鈥渒nowledge鈥 databases that compile life history and other trait data to enrich multi-species analyses. In addition to carrying out and enabling large-scale ecological research, Ries has also been working on methods to integrate big-data approaches into undergraduate education, and she is also increasingly interested in informal education opportunities as well.

She is currently affiliated with Georgetown University where she continues聽work on the physiological limits to growth imposed by extreme temperatures. Combining lab and field research with large-scale distribution data could provide a powerful approach to exploring the impacts of changing land cover and climate at regional, continental and global scales.


Claire Brunel | Energy Policy Today:
The Environment, the Economy, and Contemporary PoliticsMarch 29, 2017

Many companies and sectors are reevaluating their carbon footprint. They are seeking alternate ways that incorporate the use of sustainable energy. With growing populations, the declining access to other natural resources and the repercussions of having exhausted them, the future of energy has become a highly discussed and challenging topic.

Claire Brunel is an assistant professor at 猫咪社区app University. She is particularly interested in providing empirical evidence of the links between environmental policies聽and international competitiveness. For example, she asks whether policies that encouraged the use and the development of renewable energies in the OECD led to an increase in domestic innovation and manufacturing, or rather to a rise in the licensing and importing of foreign technologies. Other works examine the role of the offshoring of polluting industries in emissions reductions of EU and 猫咪社区app manufacturing and how to measure the stringency of environmental policies.