This talk works through the emerging methodology of the energy humanities in order to explore Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick and other nineteenth-century texts about energy, animals, and the ocean. Professor Jones theorizes Moby-Dick as a work of “peak whale oil” and suggests other points of continuity between whaling and petroleum culture. Ultimately, Herman Melville and other observers writing from the beginning of massive fossil fuel consumption in the nineteenth century help us understand how the energy transition of the nineteenth century might speak to the energy and climate crises of the twenty-first century.

Join Ryan Pankau, U of I Extension Horticulture Educator and the SWS for a tour of winter trees at the U of I Arboretum. Ryan will teach us how to tell the forest from the trees and how to key apart species we commonly see in Illinois. Just because there aren’t leaves on the trees doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting to look at!

Winter Tree ID Workshop
Friday, January 31st 2020
Afternoon Time TBD