Oil and Empire

FYSEMR 72Z Subject & Catalog Number

Description

What is the relationship between oil and empire? How has control over oil—the single most important commodity in the world—shaped the nature of power, politics, and environmental and social life in the twentieth century? How have different disciplines contributed to and at times undermined a critical understanding of oil politics? This interactive seminar will address these and other questions by examining the political, social, material, and cultural history of oil. Given the centrality of oil to modern life, control over this prized resource has resulted in a complex and often violent history. We will thus look at the ways in which the political economy of oil has shaped the rise and fall of empires, the fate of nation-states, the making of the economy, the nature of class, gender, and racial discrimination, and the production of historical knowledge and the built urban environment. By moving between primary source documents and films, multi-disciplinary scholarly analyses, in-class discussions and debates, and written assignments, students will learn to be principal investigators and thereby sharpen their own critical interpretive abilities. This seminar on the global history of oil will address trends and processes from Ecuador, Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela to Nigeria, Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.