Latin American Energy Humanities (Graduate Seminar)
Santiago Acosta
Yale University
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Spring 2025
The “energy humanities” is a growing interdisciplinary field that examines the cultural, social, and political significance of energy systems. In the Global North, it has gained prominence by questioning the values underpinning imaginaries of easy access to energy, technology, and transportation. This seminar, however, offers a counterpoint through the lens of Latin American cultural production, environmental history, and socio-environmental thought. In contrast to the common notion of “petromodernity” as marked by excessive consumption and resource overabundance, Latin American contexts reveal realities shaped by colonialism, extraction, uneven development, scarcity, and socio-environmental crises. These challenges, including eco-territorial conflicts and anti-extractivist resistance, are becoming increasingly urgent as the region faces the transition to “green” energy sources like wind and lithium. This seminar provides a critical overview of key approaches and debates in the energy humanities, focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean. By engaging with these topics, students will develop a robust understanding of how the energy humanities intersect with political ecology, environmental history, cultural studies, art history, and critical theory, grounded in both Global North and South perspectives.
Image: Sebastião Salgado
Ecologies of Culture: Latin American Environmental Aesthetics
Santiago Acosta
Yale University
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Fall 2024
In the age of rising sea levels, mass extinction, and carbon-driven climate change, can culture and the arts remain unchanged? This course focuses on the intersections between aesthetics and ecological practices in the context of the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch wherein humans have become a major geological force shaping the planet. It challenges traditional approaches by examining how culture and the arts can help to understand and respond to environmental crises. Discussions and readings emphasize the role of culture and aesthetics as agents and producers of environmental knowledge, highlighting their potential to challenge socio-ecological relations. Throughout the semester, students will explore various themes, including colonialism, anthropocentrism, human-animal relations, fossil capitalism, indigenous ontologies, and the impact of extractive industries on territories and bodies in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Latinx world. Students will engage with works by established and emerging artists, aiming to produce ecocritical knowledge about the current climate and environmental crisis. The course also offers a panoramic view of Latin American culture by examining some key historical events and authors whose works can shed light on cultural and ideological processes at the root of climate change. By the end of the semester, students will be able to formulate research questions that are critical to the field of Latin American environmental humanities, as well as produce papers that are relevant to a broader debate about culture and ecology. Lastly, the course hopes to motivate students—beyond the classroom—to examine their place in an increasingly warming world.
Sample Readings:
• Francisco Serratos, El Capitaloceno: Una historia radical de la crisis climática
• Hugo García Manríquez, Anti-Humboldt: Una lectura del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte
• Verónica Gerber Bicecci, La compañía
• Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva, Ancestral Clouds, Ancestral Claims
• Erick J. Mota, Habana Underguater
• Ailton Krenak, La vida no es útil
Image: Tomás Saraceno, The Aerocene Project
Energizing Latin America
Santiago Acosta
Yale University
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Spring 2024
This class presents an in-depth examination of how modern societies are entangled with the energy systems that have fueled their own potential demise. Recognizing the current ecological crisis as the main challenge of our times, the class invites students to reflect on how culture, ideas, and narratives shape our relationship with the earth. Contrary to the common perception of energy as a passive resource that is “just there” for the taking, the course posits it as dependent on narratives, labor practices, and political projects that constitute nature as the “raw matter” of modernity. Such narratives and practices often remain hidden, subtly influencing our trajectory in manners that evade daily recognition. Therefore, one of the primary objectives of this class is to unveil the often invisible systems of energy that dominate modern life. For this reason, our sessions will delve into how artists and thinkers have sought to imagine sustainable futures by exposing the impacts of energy’s covert yet extensive presence. Focusing on the history and cultural production of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the course is deeply informed by the histories of colonialism, imperialism, and resistance across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Latinx world. We will start by analyzing the roots of the current climate crisis through the lens of oil capitalism, reflecting on the problem of how to “read” the pervasive influence of petroleum on modern societies. Our focus will then shift to the politics and cultural representations of oil in Venezuela—Latin America’s largest oil producer and an early “petro-state” in the region—, from the beginnings of oil extraction in the early twentieth century to the contemporary nostalgia for the golden era of the 1970s and 80s oil booms. We will also address the cultural politics of petroleum extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon and current struggles over fuel accessibility through Mexican “petrocinema.” The second half of the course delves deeper into other energy regimes, including the political ecology of hydroelectric dams, the imaginaries of the Nuclear Age, struggles over energy justice in Puerto Rico, and conflicts concerning lithium (used in electric car batteries) in the Chilean deserts. Finally, the last section explores the promises and pitfalls of wind and solar energies, as we collectively attempt to envision alternative worlds and more sustainable ways of relating to the earth.
Sample Readings:
• Carlos Contramaestre, Cabimas-Zamuro
• Edgar Nito, Huachicolero
• Carlos Machado Quintela, La obra del siglo
• Margot Benacerraf, Araya
• Macarena Gómez-Barris, The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives
• After Oil Collective, Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice
Image: Allora & Calzadilla, 2 hose petrified Petrol Pump (2012)
Rethinking Nature and Culture from Latin America (Graduate Seminar)
Santiago Acosta
Yale University
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Spring 2024
The present ecological crisis, characterized by climate change, species extinction, global pandemics, and the unequal distribution of environmental harm has brought about a transformation in critical thought. The “environmental humanities” denotes the integration of interdisciplinary perspectives analyzing the relations between humans and nature to critique dominant modes of production and consumption and envision alternate ways of inhabiting the earth. This graduate seminar provides a critical overview of some of the key approaches and debates in this growing field, with an emphasis on Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx culture and history. Over the course of the semester, students will carefully examine diverse contemporary frameworks generated both in the Global South and the Global North, such as posthumanism, new materialisms, ecofeminism, eco-Marxism, world-ecology, and the energy humanities. By engaging with recent works by philosophers, environmental historians, critical geographers, and scholars in literary and cultural studies, students will gain a strong foundation in human and nonhuman relations within the broader context of the environmental history of capitalism. Students will participate in class discussions, write weekly responses, lead and moderate academic-style presentations, write a book review, and produce a final research paper.
Sample Readings:
• Ericka Beckman. Capital Fictions: The Literature of Latin America’s Export Age.
• Victoria Saramago. Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America.
• Carolyn Fornoff. Subjunctive Aesthetics: Mexican Cultural Production in the Era of Climate Change.
• Héctor Hoyos. Things With a History: Transcultural Materialism and the Literatures of Extraction in Contemporary Latin America.
Image: from Carolina Caycedo, The Serpent River Book (2017)
Latin America: Environment and Society
Santiago Acosta
SUNY Old Westbury
Department of History and Philosophy
Spring 2023
This course explores the historical relationships between people and environments in Latin America. Through an interdisciplinary lens combining approaches from the social sciences and the humanities, students will explore the region’s history and the socio-ecological impacts of colonialism, extractive industries, energy use, and climate change, among other issues. We will begin by delving into the history of sugar and its connections with slavery in the Caribbean, the role of Amazon rubber extraction in the Industrial Revolution, and the influence of US colonialism in shaping the production of bananas in Central America. The course will also examine the lives and struggles of Bolivian miners during the 1950s and the impact of Venezuelan petroleum on society and politics in the twentieth century. Climate justice struggles in Puerto Rico and the US-Mexico border will also be explored, alongside new ecofeminist movements and indigenous challenges against extraction. This course also incorporates cultural examples from literature, art, and film that provide a unique perspective on nature-society relations and offer alternative ways of relating to the earth. This General Education course in the Major Cultures domain aims to equip students with the tools to comprehend Latin America’s historical and environmental impact on the world while fostering critical thinking skills to approach complex issues that are relevant to the challenges facing the region today. Taught in English.
Sample Readings:
• Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet
• Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History
• Miguel Tinker Salas, The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela
• Domitila Barrios de Chúngara, Let Me Speak! Testimony of Domitila, A Woman of the Bolivian Mines
• Thea Riofrancos, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador
• Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right
Image: Central American Banana Plantation (1902-1911), Tulane University Library
Ciencia ficción latinoamericana
Santiago Acosta
University of California, Davis
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Spring 2021
Este curso invita a explorar la ficción especulativa y ciencia ficción latinoamericanas del siglo XXI a partir de los ejemplos más relevantes de la narrativa y el cine recientes. Estudiaremos aquellos rasgos que diferencian a este género de su contraparte anglosajona, así como los vínculos entre las obras y el contexto político y social de Latinoamérica. Más que hacer un repaso histórico, nos interesa analizar las temáticas comunes del género en la región, incluyendo: la crítica a nociones eurocéntricas del progreso, la indagación en el trauma histórico de la colonización por medio de la ucronía, el cuestionamiento de la dominación económica y cultural de Estados Unidos, el impacto de nuevas tecnologías como las redes sociales y la inteligencia artificial, y los cambios en la noción de “lo humano” frente a las realidades de la cibernética y la amenaza de la crisis ecológica del presente.
Algunos de los autores que leeremos son: Daniel Salvo (Perú), Solange Rodríguez Pappe (Ecuador), Ramiro Sanchiz (Uruguay), Samantha Schweblin (Argentina), Teresa Pilar Mira de Echeverría (Argentina), Edmundo Paz Soldán (Bolivia) y Fernando Contreras Castro (Costa Rica).
Imagen: Luis Carlos Barragán.