This asynchronous course explores the historical relationship between human societies and energy. Today, the United States make up some 5 percent of the world’s population but account for a quarter of the world’s energy consumption. Why? Is there something in American society that predisposes it to high energy consumption, or did the high consumption make American society? And what does the relationship between politics, culture, and energy look like in other parts of the world?

Over the course of the semester, we will examine the history of energy production, distribution, and consumption around the world, and how it has impacted the world we live in. We will grapple with questions of whether certain technologies make certain societies inevitable, or whether perhaps it is the other way around. Each week, we will explore one or two sources of energy, and look at their impact on the societies and people involved in its generation, distribution, and consumption. We will see how energy can shed light on topics as varied as geopolitical power relations, war, labor organizing, gender roles, leisure activities, and the climate.

"THE ROARING '20's:  BECOMING MODERN IN THE U.S."

Fulfills Historical Perspectives Discovery requirement; History Major/Minor Elective

“The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts.”  So said the novelist Willa Cather, capturing the view of many Americans that the 1920s ushered in a distinctly modern age.  Everything seemed new and exciting: automobiles, radios, ‘moving pictures’, Harlem jazz clubs, flappers, speakeasies, skyscrapers.  But not all Americans embraced modernity.  The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, racial violence, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, the Red Scare, massive immigration restrictions, a widening generation gap, debates over the “new woman” – all revealed deep cultural divides in what some have called an “age of anxiety.  Relying heavily on a variety of cultural sources of the era – films, famous trials, literature, art, advertisements, cartoons,  commentaries – we will explore the tensions and contradictions of the 1920s as Americans struggled over what becoming “modern” meant for their personal lives, and for the nation as a whole.