Locations
EVENT Oct 26
ABSTRACT Jun 30
Abstract days left 28
Viewed 43 times

Energy Humanities - PAMLA Special Session (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA))

Hilton Portland Hotel, Portland, OR
Organization: PAMLA
Event: Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA)
Categories: Postcolonial, Graduate Conference, American, Hispanic & Latino, Comparative, Interdisciplinary, British, Popular Culture, Literary Theory, World Literatures, African-American, Colonial, Revolution & Early National, Transcendentalists, 1865-1914, 20th & 21st Century, Medieval, Early Modern & Renaissance, Long 18th Century, Romantics, Victorian, 20th & 21st Century, Aesthetics, Anthropology/Sociology, Classical Studies, Cultural Studies, Environmental Studies, Film, TV, & Media, Food Studies, History, Philosophy, African & African Diasporas, Asian & Asian Diasporas, Australian Literature, Canadian Literature, Caribbean & Caribbean Diasporas, Indian Subcontinent, Eastern European, Mediterranean, Middle East, Native American, Scandinavian, Pacific Literature, Science
Event Date: 2023-10-26 to 2023-10-29 Abstract Due: 2023-06-30

Emerging as a rapidly-developing interdisciplinary field, scholarship in the Energy Humanities seeks to engage with how energy shapes cultural and creative practices of society. As scholar Derek Gladwin states in his book Ecological Exile: “The energy humanities offer a framework to discuss alternative energy models, aesthetic ways of presenting energy forms in public, and predicting energy futures” (71). Whether in the form of fascination with electricity in the Romantic period, nuclear hopes and fears extending from the mid-19th century, or engagements with petrocultures in our current fossil fuel era, energy has made an undeniable impact on literature, media, and film. Energy, and all that comes with extractivism, operations, and infrastructure, often blends into the background of our daily experience to go unanalyzed in what Patricia Yaeger calls “the energy unconscious” (309). What can we gain by drawing out the engagements between energy and culture? How are lives determined by energy in the past, present, and the possible future? Why do some cultural traits arise out of some energy systems but not others? To what extent can we use energy to periodize literature, art, technology, and history? How might energy studies engage with other fields of study such as the environmental humanities, postcolonial studies, gender and sexuality studies, animal studies, and others?

This special session panel invites papers that explore any of the myriad ways energy regimes engage with culture. The Energy Humanities are suited for the theme of “Shifting Perspectives” for the 2023 conference, and special consideration will be given to papers that explore the following topics:

Cross-Cultural Depictions of Energy
Energy Futures/ Energy in Science Fiction
Petrofiction and Climate Change
Energy in Popular Culture/ Genre Fiction
Creative/ Critical Representations of Energy and Culture
Changing Meanings of Energy
Energy Aesthetics
Re/definitions of Daily Experiences Involving Energy
Energy and the Classics

Sources:
Derek Gladwin, Ecological Exile: Spatial Injustice and Environmental Humanities, Routledge, 2018.

Yaeger, Patricia, et al. “Editor’s Column: Literature in the Ages of Wood, Tallow, Coal, Whale Oil, Gasoline, Atomic Power, and Other Energy Sources.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. 126, no. 2, 2011, pp. 305-26.

 

Submit abstracts via PAMLA CFP system. Link to panel: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/18860

https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/18860

mmadigar@uoregon.edu

Madalynn Madigar