Università Roma Tre

We will explore the advent of fossil fuels with the emergence of the age of coal, then of hydrocarbons, and the most recent trend towards renewable energy sources. This will be done by analysing great power politics, political and economic debates on energy, the expansion of Fordism and consumerism, the role of multinational oil companies, the pressures stemming from decolonization and form the emergence of the environmentalist debate from the 1970s up to the more recent debate on the "Anthropocene" and "decarbonization".

Questions and concepts such as “resource curse”, “conservationism”, “Dutch disease”, “limits of growth”, "peak oil", "sustainable development", "extractivism", will be discussed and informed by the relevant literature (and possibly archival material), and with the help images and documentaries.

This course is taught in English.

For everyone (3 texts):

1. Bruce Podobnik, "Global Energy Shifts. Fostering Sustainability in a Turbulent Age"

2. Van De Graaf/Sovacool, "Global Energy Politics" OR Per Hogselius, "Energy and Geopolitics"

3. Giuliano Garavini, "The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the 20th Century"


For the "non frequentanti" for those who take 8CFU, add to the 3 compulsory readings one of these:

Ervand Abrahamian, "Oil Crisis in Iran: From Nationalism to Coup d'Etat"
Kate Aronoff, "Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet - and How We can Fight Back"
Gretchen Bakke, "The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future"
Basosi/Garavini/Trentin, "Counter-Shock: the Oil Counter-Revolution of the 1980s"
Stehen Gross, "Energy and Power: Germany in the Age of Oil, Atoms and Climate Change"
Nicholas Georgescu-Rogan, "Energy and Economc Myths"
Amitav Ghosh, "The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable"
Thane Gustafson, "The Bridge: Natural Gas in a Redivided Europe"
Michael Herb, "The Wages of Oil. Parliaments and Economic Development in Kuwait and the UAE"
Jason Hickel, "Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World"
Per Hogselius, "Red Gas"
William Stanley Jevons, "The Coal Question"
Daniel Yergin, "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power"
Naomi Klein, "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate"
Leonardo Maugeri, "Beyond the Age of Oil: The Myths, Realities, and Future of Fossil Fuels and Their Alternatives"
Paasha Mahdavi, "Power Grab. Political Survival through Extractive Resource Nationalization"
Andreas Malm, "Fossil Capital. The Rise of the Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming"
Andreas Malm. "How to Blow Up a Pipeline"
Victor McFarland, "Oil Powers: A History of the US-Saudi Alliance"
Bernard Mommer, "Global Oil and the Nation State"
Bethany McLean, "The Smartest Guys in the Room. The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron"
Timothy Mitchell, "Carbon Democracy. Political Power in the Age of Oil"
Guillaume Pitron, "the Rare Metals War: the Dark Side of Clean Energy and Digital Technologies"
Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, "The Oil Pentagon"
Simon Pirani, "Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuels Consumption"
Luigi Piccioni, La cronologia di "altronovecento" dell'ambiente e dell'ambientalismo 1853-2000
Joachim Radkau, "The Age of Ecology: A Global History"
Thea Riofrancos, "Resource Radicals. From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador"
Henry Sanderson "Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green"
Myrna Santiago, "The Ecology of Oil. Environment, Labour and the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1938"
Van De Graaf/ Sovacoool, "Global Enegy Politics"
Robert Vitalis, "Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt US Energy Policy"
Tyler Volk, "CO2 Raising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge"