A special Focus Section for Anglistik (summer 2027, vol. 38, no. 2) edited by Paul Hamann-Rose and Kai Merten
At a time of environmental, economic and energetic crisis, humanity’s continuing dependence on fossil fuels has come to the forefront of cultural debate (Mitchell 2011, Boyer 2014, Moore 2015, Malm 2016, Scott 2018). The emerging field of energy humanities responds to such urgent concerns by exploring how energy has shaped, and continues to shape, literature and culture in history (Underwood 2005, MacDu ie 2014, Gold 2021, Miller 2021, Lynall 2021, Carroll 2022, Berns 2023). Energy is fundamentally entangled with human literature and culture in often unexpected ways and therefore exceeds not just geographical and temporal, but also disciplinary boundaries. In addition, the energy humanities are interested in alternative concepts and uses of energy beyond the physical notions of work and resource, which have dominated the discussion since the 19th century and have profoundly impacted the eco-systems and geology of the earth (Szeman and Boyer 2017, Daggett 2019). We propose to conceptualize these changing practices and discourses of energy, of its availability and circulation, as energy ecologies.
The Anglistik Focus seeks to establish a critical and multiperspectival dialogue about literary and cultural negotiations of energy ecologies in anglophone regions from around 1500 to the present. While the period from the 19th century, and its reliance on fossil energies such as coal and (later) oil, are often foregrounded in such explorations, we are also interested in negotiations of earlier energy ecologies, more strongly based on wood and water. We are looking for articles of 5.000 to 7.000 words in length, to be published in the 2027 summer issue of the journal Anglistik. Topics may include but are not limited to:
- physical and/vs. other (earlier) notions of energy in anglophone literatures and cultures
- negotiations of particular energy sources (wood, coal, petroleum, etc.) in anglophone literatures and cultures
- energy and/vs. work and labour in anglophone literatures and cultures
- the discourse of human (physical) energy, e.g. in the industrialization and in colonialism
- anglophone literary and cultural imaginaries of energetic limitation/exhaustion and of energetic abundance/surplus
- literary closure and energy, literary form/genre and energy
- anglophone literatures/cultures and energetic desire: anticipation or recuperation of energetic potential
- anglophone literatures and cultures of growth and of degrowth; growth and degrowth as a formal element of literature and culture
- extractivism in and of anglophone literatures and cultures
- the energetic unconscious in anglophone literatures and cultures
- energy’s (ir)representability/(in)visibility in anglophone literatures and cultures
Please submit abstracts of 200 to 250 words for your article and 100 words of biographical details until 1 November 2025 for articles (5.000 to 7.000 words) to be submitted by 1 October 2026, to both kai.merten@uni-erfurt.de and paul.hamannrose@uni-passau.de
Works Mentioned
Berns, Ute. “Coleridge’s Ecologies and Energy Poetics: The Case of Lyrical Ballads.” Romantische Ökologien: Vielfältige Naturen um 1800, edited by R. Borgards, F. Middelho and B. Thums, Metzler, 2023, pp. 227-248.
Boyer, Dominic. “Energopower: An Introduction”. Anthopological Quarterly: Special Collection on Energopower and Biopower in Transition, vol. 87, no. 2, 2014, pp. 309-334.
Carroll, Siobahn. “Dangerous Energies: Agency and Energy Regimes in the Waverley Novels.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 61, no. 2, 2022, pp. 255-277.
Daggett, Cara New. The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics & the Politics of Work. Duke UP, 2019.
Gold, Barri J. Energy, Ecocriticism, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Novel Ecologies. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
Lynall, Greg. Imagining Solar Energy: The Power of the Sun in Literature, Science and Culture. Bloomsbury, 2021.
MacDu ie, Allen. Victorian Literature, Energy, and the Ecological Imagination. Cambridge UP, 2014.
Malm, Andreas. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. Verso, 2016.
Miller, Elizabeth Carolyn. Extraction Ecologies and the Literature of the Long Exhaustion. Princeton UP, 2021.
Mitchell, Timothy. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Verso, 2011.
Moore, Jason W. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso, 2015.
Underwood, Ted. The Work of the Sun: Literature, Science, and Economy, 1760-1860. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Scott, Heidi C. M. Fuel: An Ecocritical History. Bloomsbury, 2018.
Szeman, Imre and Dominic Boyer, eds. Energy Humanities: An Anthology. Johns Hopkins UP, 2017.
