The recent turn to the 'energy humanities' is only beginning to galvanize scholarship on the material and symbolic impact of energy regimes in the long history of modernity. But research in the energy humanities remains focused somewhat myopically on the past seventy-five years and often appeals to reductive notions of an Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century as the terminus a quo for any investigation into the topic. This reading group joins ongoing conversations in early modern studies that look to the past and a deep history of energy transitions (and additions).

Readings will include primary selections on the myth of Prometheus from Bacon and Boccaccio as well as the seminal introduction by Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer to their Energy Humanities anthology.

This reading group is being launched in conjunction with Oecologies and the upcoming January 10th UGLA Clark Library conference.

For readings and Zoom code, please RSVP by October 23rd to: kschuhmacher@ucdavis.edu