During the 2018-2019 academic year, Yale Environmental Humanities sponsored a yearlong conversation to explore the intersection of energy and the humanities. The program included roundtables and workshops featuring Yale faculty and student work, visiting speakers, and two international workshops in the spring. Two new courses, “American Energy History” and “Energy and Society” also were offered in the spring semester.
These activities brought together a diverse set of voices to explore the present and future of the energy humanities. Participants included Yale faculty and students working on energy issues from fields as disparate as literature, philosophy, the arts, history, anthropology, gender studies, development studies, and film and media studies, as well as colleagues approaching energy studies from the social sciences, engineering, and natural sciences.