Global Energy and the American Dream

This lecture course explores the historical, cultural, and political relationship between America and global energy, focusing on oil, coal, natural gas, biofuels, and alternatives. Through case studies at home and abroad, we examine how cultural, environmental, economic, and geopolitical processes are entangled with changing patterns of energy-related resource extraction, production, distribution, and use. America's changing position as global consumer and dreamer is linked to increasingly violent contests over energy abroad while our fuel-dependent dreams of boundless (oil) power give way to uncertainties and new possibilities of nation, nature, and the future. Assuming that technology and markets alone will not save us, what might a culturally, politically, and socially-minded inquiry contribute to understanding the past and future of global energy and the American dream?
Course Attributes: EN S; BU Eth; BU IS; AS LCD; AS SSC; FA SSC; AR SSC; FA CPSC

Global Energy and the American Dream

GLOBAL STUDIES 353

Section 01