After being postponed due to the 2025 L.A. wildfires, the “Energy Transitions in Long Modernity” conference resumed critical dialogues in energy humanities. Organizers Robert N. Watson (UCLA), Tiffany Jo Werth (UC Davis), and Todd Borlik (Purdue) advocated for multidisciplinary approaches to energy questions, drawing on Olivia Judson’s framework of five energetic epochs—geochemical, sunlight, oxygen, flesh, and fire—conceptualized not as successive eras but as coexisting systems in planetary evolution.
Rather than perpetuating myths of seamless “energy transitions,” panelists examined hybridized moments of “energy addition,” interrogating cultural narratives surrounding energy transition and even California’s own self-image as a renewable energy landscape. One of the panelists, Ursula K. Heise (UCLA) explored solar imaginaries in science fiction, demonstrating how energy remains largely invisible in technocratic and utopian narratives. Solarpunk attempts to visualize decentralized, democratic energy futures, despite criticism regarding individualist undertones and insufficient political engagement. Victoria Googasian (Georgetown University in Qatar) examined the genre of U.S. space opera and its reliance on abundant, yet unexamined energy, analyzing how these narratives generate new heroic archetypes while exposing the embodied labor and disabilities of energy workers.
Graeme Macdonald (University of Warwick) provocatively framed the field’s central question: “When is renewable energy?” His analysis suggests contemporary transitions represent hybrid compromises where fossil fuels endure culturally and symbolically. While earlier panelists examined narratives of energy futures, Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (UC Davis) turned to the past, situating Dickens’ Great Expectations as a novel that addresses the industrial ocean and maritime energy systems.
Concluding panels examined early modern energy rhetoric, nineteenth-century fossil fuel culture, and contemporary public policies. These conversations collectively critique dominant energy imaginaries while exploring how energy infrastructures might conserve rather than ravage ecosystems.
-Anna Dobrowolski, PhD in English Literature