Taught By:
Nicole Fabricant
Professor of Anthropology
Towson University
nfabricant@towson.edu
Read profile here.
Course Description:
This course examines our historic dependency upon non-renewable fossil fuels: coal, oil, natural gas as our primary energy sources. Formed from organic material over the course of millions of years, fossil fuels have fueled U.S. and global economic development over the past century (providing a quick and easy fix and fueling our consumptive lives). Yet fossil fuels have also historically embedded in US militaristic, repressive regimes abroad; undermined social democratic governments in parts of Latin America and elsewhere and ultimately are finite resources. While this global, political economic lens will help us understand regimes of power and powerlessness, we will also hone in on the places where fossil fuels are extracted (parts of the global south and impoverished regions of the US). What are the social, economic, and environmental contradictions of our dependency upon fossil fuels? From the heart of Appalachia to oil towns to pipeline resistance, we will collectively map some of the struggles on the ground and interrogate the social movements taking shape and form (to present socio-economic alternatives).
Student Campaigns:
The course will end with an understanding of how our dependency upon non-renewable fossil fuels has created a climactic crisis. We will chart ways out of this climactic crisis by engaging with some of the material on energy democracy. What are the concrete steps we might take to confront climate change? How and in what ways can we use this course as a toolkit of knowledge to shift our individual practices of consumption and collectively envision alternatives?