Oct 22 2024

Energies Symposium | Energy Politics & Green Colonialism with Caleb Wellum, Myles Lennon and Tsēmā Igharas

Tue | 6PM

SI is pleased to present the third chapter of the Energies Symposium, a series of lectures, panels, performances, and film screenings that address ecological, social, and geopolitical dimensions of energy, historically and today, while highlighting the power of community-driven infrastructural solutions.

With lectures by cultural historian Caleb Wellum and environmental anthropologist Myles Lennon, and a performance-lecture by artist Tsēmā Igharas, this event both examines the geopolitics of energy and its crises from the 1970s to the present day, and reflects on the long durée of colonial capitalism, where the toxic, polluting effects of renewable and non-renewable energy production accumulate disproportionately in racialized communities. These diverse presentations will be followed with a panel conversation. 

Please RSVP to rsvp@swissinstitute.net.

Caleb Wellum is Assistant Professor of US History in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. He writes and teaches about modern history, politics, and culture with a particular interest in energy. His book about the 1970s energy crisis in the United States—Energizing Neoliberalism— came out in late 2023 with Johns Hopkins University Press.Wellum is the Editor of Energy Humanities and a member of the Petrocultures Research Group. He contributed to the collectively authored books After Oil and Solarities and is currently co-organizing the After Oil 3 workshops. Wellum has published on the history of energy conservation, oil futures, environmental photography, car films, and the future of the humanities, among other topics. He is currently at work on three research projects: on the energy and cultural history of the ‘New Economy’; on the relationship between energy, theory, and the practice of history; and on midcentury critiques of techno-utopianism.

Myles Lennon is an environmental anthropologist, Dean’s Assistant Professor of Environment & Society and Anthropology at Brown University, and a former sustainable energy policy practitioner. His first book, Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism, will be published by Duke University Press in 2025. Lennon holds a B.A. in Development Studies from Brown University and a Ph.D in environmental anthropology from Yale University. His research and scholarly objectives are informed by his experience as a sustainable energy practitioner and advocate in New York for eight years prior to beginning his Ph.D.

Tsēmā Igharas is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and descendant of Tāłtān Matriarchy, living and working on Ohlone Lands in Berkley, California. Using strategies of care and resistance Tsēmā creates work that connects materials to mine sites and bodies to the land. This practice cites her Indigenous mentorships, Potlatch, studies in visual culture, and time in the mountains. She has studied at K’saan, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and earned an Interdisciplinary Masters of Art Media and Design from OCADu.  Tsēmā has exhibited and performed in Canada, the US, and beyond.

The Energies Symposium is made possible in part through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Image: Tsēmā Igharas, Tailings Pool, 2021. Public art installation at 87 Higgins in Winnipeg MB, Canada. Photo by Karen Asher.