Reading for the World: System, Resource, Text (or the Energetic
Humanities)
Convenor: Dr Claire Westall (English)
MA Option Module Spring 2017
This is an energetic NEW Special Module, being offered for the first time in Spring 2017. It
will introduce students to an understanding of the world-literary system, and the
intellectual and theoretical developments necessary to think in ‘worlded’ terms. More
exactly, it will introduce students to resource-related prose, often fiction, as well as other
cultural texts (e.g. graphic novels, documentaries, blockbuster films), and use such material
to reconfigure debates about postcoloniality, globalization and the capitalist world system.
And, it will help students to analyse different forms of human and non-human energy, and
to consider their interactions. It will encourage students to think across geographic
boundaries and through relational inequalities by concentrating on depictions of energy
resources and energy expenditure, moving from the human body out into the world
system. Topics will include land and labour, food and bio-politics, coal and collapse, iron
men, oil and water, and electricity, with attention being paid to shifts in energy paradigms
and, at the human leve, labouring, sporting and suffering bodies. This module will appeal to
students interested in world literature, literature’s relationship to politics, and
contemporary eco-criticism, as it moves to consider the world-ecological dimensions of
energy management. This will enable students to develop new ways of approaching
comparative literary studies and to get to grips with new developments in what is called
the Energy Humanities.
Background Reading
Before the module begins you might want to do some reading to ground yourself in the
terms of debate contexualising the module. Note: some of the ‘background reading’ will be
directly used as theoretical required readings during the module, but all are useful for
contextualising and theorising what is at stake in the module.
Setting up a general understanding of energy
Bridge & Le Billon, Oil (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
Buell, Frederick. “A Short History of Oil Cultures: Or, the Marriage of Catastrophe and
Exuberance.” Journal of American Studies 46. 02. (2012): 273−293.
Klein, Naomi, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2014). The whole book is relevant, but the ‘Introduction’ is particularly
helpful.
Rabinbach, Anson, The Human Motor: energy, fatigue, and the origins of modernity
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) – Introduction specifically.
Robertson, William, Energy: Stop Faking It! Finally Understanding Science So You Can
Teach It (National Science Teachers Association, 2002
Smil, Vaclav, Energy (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006)
Smil, Vaclav, Oil: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: OneWorld, 2008)
Smil, Vaclav, General Energetics: energy in the biosphere and civilization (New York:
Wiley, 1991)
Smil, Vaclav, Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties (Mass: MIT,
2003)
Szeman, Imre After Oil (Petrocultures Research Group, 2016)
Szeman, Imre, “Crude Aesthetics”, Journal of American Studies Vol. 46 Issue 2, May 2012,
pp. 423-439
For specific academic sources and debates about energy provision see journals like:
Energy; The Energy Journal; Energy, Sustainability and Society; Natural Resources Research
Readings for our specifically world-literary approach to energetics
Casanova, Pascale, The World Republic of Letters (2004)
** Damrosch, David, What is World Literature? ‘Introduction: Goethe Coins a Phrase’ (2003)
Deloughrey, Elizabeth and George B. Handley, ‘Introduction: Towards an Aesthetics of the
Earth. In Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001.
** Deckard, Sharae. ‘Editorial’. Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 16.1 (2012): 5–14.
** Lazarus, Neil. 2011. ‘What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say’. Race & Class 53.1: 3–27.
** MacDonald, Graeme, ‘The Resources of Fiction’, Reviews in Cultural Theory Vol 4, Issue 2
(2013): 1−24.
MacDonald, Graeme, “Oil and World Literature”, American Book Review, March/April 2012,
Vol. 33, No. 3
** Moore, Jason W. “The End of Cheap Nature or: How I learned to Stop Worrying about
‘the’ Environment and Love the Crisis of Capitalism,” in Structures of the World
Political Economy and the Future of Global Conflict and Cooperation, edited by C.
Suter and C. Chase-Dunn. Berlin: LIT, 285-314.
Moore, Jason W. ‘Wall Street is a Way of Organizing Nature: an interview with Jason W.
Moore.’ Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action 12 (2011).
All Moore pieces are available from his website www.jasonwmoore.com and you
might want to read more than one.
** Moretti, Franco, ‘Conjectures on World Literature’, New Left Review (2000)
Niblett, Michael “World-Economy, World-Ecology, World Literature”, in Green Letters:
Studies in Ecocriticism 16 (2012)
Nixon, Rob. ‘Slow Violence, Gender, and the Environmentalism of the Poor’. Journal of
Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. Vols 13. 14.1 (2007), 14−37.
** WReC, Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World-Literature
(2015). Chapter One ‘World-Literature in the Context of Combined and Uneven
Development’
Weekly Schedule of Primary Required Reading for Spring Term 2017
Week 2: Sweetness & Light – theory (items above marked **) plus poetry & short stories
Week 3: Sugar & Sleep: The Farming of Bones (1998) by Edwidge Danticat
Week 4: Bananas & (Bio)Politics – Banana stories & extracts
Week 5: Iron Men –The Iron Man (1968) by Ted Hughes
Week 6: Coal & Collapse – GB84 (2004) by David Peace
Week 7: Oil/Water – Helon Habila, Oil on Water (2011) plus Steve Dunn & Sharon Wheeler,
Oil & Water (2011)
Week 8: Electricity & Excess – Electricity (2006) by Ray Robinson
Week 9: Inter-galactic Energies – Tau Zero (1970 [1967]) by Poul Anderson
Students will need to purchase copies of the primary texts listed above, covering weeks 3
through 9 for the term.
Relevant Documentaries & Films
Week 2/3
That Sugar Film (Damon Gameau, Australia, 2014)
The Price of Sugar, (dir. Bill Haney, Domincan Republic/USA, 2007)
The Secrets of Sugar (Ronna Syed & Allya Davidson, 2013)
Week 4
Bananas! (dir Fredrik Gertten, 2009) http://www.bananasthemovie.com/
Life & Debt (dir Stephanie Black, UK, 2003)
Week 5
The Iron Giant (dir. Brad Bird 1999)
Iron Man (dir John Favreau, 2008), plus Iron Man 2 and Iron Man 3
Living is Winning (dir. Linda Burns 2008)
Week 6
The Battle of Orgreave (dir Jeremy Deller 2001)
The Price of Coal (dir Ken Loach, 1977)
Week 7
There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2007)
Lessons From Darkness, (Germany/Kuwait, dir. Werner Herzog, 1992)
A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (Ray McCormack, Switzerland, 2006)
Petropolis, (dir. Peter Mettler, Canada, 2009, http://www.petropolis-film.com/#)
Wiebo's War (dir. Peter York, 2011), http://www.wieboswar.com/
Week 8
Electricity (dir Bryn Higgens, UK, 2014)
The Selfish Giant (dir Clio Bernard, UK, 2013)
Week 9
Ridley Scott dir., The Martian (2015)