Book Talk Lunch with Thomas Turnbull - Energy’s History: Toward a Global Canon (Stanford, 2025)
Thomas Turnbull, a historical geographer from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin who is a visiting fellow with the centre of excellence for Anthropocene History in September will present his forthcoming co-edited book Energy’s History: Toward a Global Canon (Stanford University Press, 2025), register below.
Time: Wed 2024-09-18 11.00 - 13.00
Location: Division for History of Science, Technology and Environment, Teknikringen 74D, Level 5
Language: English
Participating: Thomas Turnbull (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science MPIWG, Berlin)
Please register here before 15 september to attend and recieve the provided lunch sandwich.
“Energy history is an approach to understanding the past that takes changes in the human exploitation of Earth's energies as its object of inquiry. This interdisciplinary field documents and analyzes how humans thought about, harnessed, stored, and exploited stocks and flows of energy. In recent decades, in response to evidence of the effect of fossil fuel use in our climatic system and coinciding with an energy turn across the humanities, a new urgency and purpose has been ascribed to such work. Energy's History challenges abstract and universalizing conceptions of energy's history-making capacities. This collection contains twelve chapters that present, analyze, and contextualize a primary source. The contributors focus on ideas, events, and statements that recorded and critiqued the distinct historical paths of energy, thereby broadening the scope of where and what constitutes energy history.
As energy's world-making has enmeshed ever more of the planet into a dangerous compact with fossil fuels, energy histories must be revised within this new energy-historical reality. This volume both presents persuasive visions of energy-driven development beyond the Western capitalist model and provides an expansive and critical account of the ways in which energy histories have shaped the past and impact the present.”
Please register here by 16 september to attend and recieve the provided brown-bag sandwich.