Paolo Bacigalupi Reading, Nov. 2nd at Rice

The award-winning science fiction author Paolo Bacigalupi will read in the Rice Chapel on Nov. 2nd at 5:30pm. His books will be on sale at the event courtesy of Brazos Bookstore. Following the reading and discussion, there will be a short book signing. We are excited to hear from a writer who has been much read, […]
Eliot Storer on Geoengineering and Biopolitics

CENHS predoctoral fellow Eliot Storer is working on geoengineering. His post at the Committee on Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC) blog investigates the biopolitical stakes of proposed environmental technologies and interventions. Eliot Storer is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University. His research engages environmental management, planetary thinking, and […]
Matthew Schneider-Mayerson reviews three energy books in the American Quarterly

Writing in the American Quarterly, the primary journal of the American Studies Association, former CENHS postdoc Matthew Schneider-Mayerson (now teaching at Yale-NUS college), reviews Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden’s Oil Culture (2014), Stephanie LeMenager’s Living Oil (2014), and Christopher F. Jones’s Routes of Power (2014). He calls for more engagement in american studies with climate change and oil politics, which have so far […]
Breakdown Break Down: Culture Carrying Us into a Post-Oil World

Image Credit: Edward Burtynsky Breakdown Break Down is a new artist collective devoted to developing post-oil culture. Their account of petrosubjectivity is especially worth a look. “How do we individually and collectively de-industrialize our sense of self and place? “Breakdown Break Down is a long term effort to organize cultural workers, artists, activists, and those interested in […]
Architect Albert Pope on Energy Humanities – ‘The Next Level Up’

Thanks to all of the participants in the 2015 Symposium! Over the next few months, the CENHS blog will be posting a series of commentaries on the work of energy humanities, building on our 4th annual Cultures of Energy symposium. We begin this series with Albert Pope’s “Next Level Up.” Read more about Rice School […]
2115: The Collective Imagination of Rice University Students

A guest post by Rice undergraduate Camila Kennedy, a sophomore majoring in Sociology. It’s the year 2115, and the skyline of every major city looks like that of Manhattan. People have abandoned the countryside and moved towards modernized cities. Suburban sprawl eats up most of America’s empty spaces, and cities begin building upward—denser and denser until skyscrapers […]
CFP for a special issue of ‘Resilience’: Environmental Futurity

Call for Papers for special issue of Resilience: Journal of Environmental Humanities on “Environmental Futurity” Special Issue editors: Cheryl Lousley, Susie O’Brien, Jennifer Wenzel Since its emergence as a concept in the mid-twentieth century, “the environment” has been bound up with questions about the future. This connection between environment and futurity is evident in the […]
Brenda Hillman: Poetry Reading and Conversation, February 12th and 13th

Lecture: Thursday, February 12th at 5:30 pm, Rice University Chapel Conversation: Friday, February 13th at 4pm, Herring Hall 100, Rice University CENHS and the Energy Arts Cluster are excited to welcome poet Brenda Hillman to Rice. Hillman is one of the most acclaimed environmental poets in the United States. Her work engages a wide range […]
CENHS Symposium 2015: Dates and Speakers

CENHS’s fourth annual symposium will take place April 16-18, 2015. The symposium is open to the public, with food and coffee provided, and we hope to see you there. Our previous symposia gathered speakers from fields such as philosophy, anthropology, literature, and climatology. You can read summaries of our 2013 and 2014 symposia. Video from the […]