Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels is one of the most critical steps in addressing the current climate crisis. Over the past century, particularly in recent decades, expanding renewable energy sources has been essential, albeit insufficient, to this process. What can the cultural production on hydropower, solar, and wind energy teach us about the possibilities, hope, limits, and pitfalls of renewable energy? How can we think critically and productively in the energy humanities about alternatives to our petrocultures?
In this course, we will explore the many facets of renewable energy sources from the viewpoint of Latin American contemporary cultural production. Across three classes, we will pay particular attention to the push for electrification that is so prevalent in contemporary environmentalism. We will discuss the long-term impact of hydropower dams on different regions and how the recent expansion of wind farms and solar panels can be understood within this broader context. We will discuss the macrolevel of national politics and global energy dependency, as well as individual stories and experiences that shape these changes. We will also address the challenges of “green capitalism,” as the increased demand for battery storage resulting from electrification has put pressure on mining rare minerals in various parts of the world, including Chile. Students will gain a general understanding of renewable energy sources, as well as a focused understanding of how cultural production works with and against them. We will cover a wide array of works, including visual art, film, literature, and critical bibliography. Works by arpilleristas from Brazil’s Movement of Dam Victims, David Maisel, Carolina Caycedo, Pedro Reyes, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Colectivo Kolibrí, and the emerging solar punk genre will be discussed. The supporting bibliography will include authors such as Thea Riofrancos, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Lisa Blackmore, Azucena Castro, Dominic Boyer, and Cymene Howe.
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Seminar 1
Mon, Aug 17, 202610:30 am to 12:30 pm -
Seminar 2
Tue, Aug 18, 202610:30 am to 12:30 pm -
Seminar 3
Wed, Aug 19, 202610:30 am to 12:30 pm -
Lecture: Against the Current: Electricity and the Environmental Imagination in Brazil
Thu, Aug 20, 20265:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Victoria Saramago is associate professor of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies at the University of Chicago. Her research covers the environmental and energy humanities in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin American literatures and cultures, with a focus on Brazil. Her award-winning monograph, Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America (Northwestern University Press, 2021), investigates the dynamic relationship between fictional images and real places, as the lasting representations of forests, rural areas, and deserts in novels that clash with collective perceptions of changes such as deforestation and urbanization. She has received a year-long fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to complete her current book project, Against the Current: Electricity and the Environmental Imagination in Brazil (under contract with the MIT Press), which examines the role of electricity in Brazilian cultural production. She has co-edited the Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics (De Gruyter, 2023) and Literature Beyond the Human: Post-Anthropocentric Brazil (Routledge, 2022), and is the author of numerous articles and book chapters.