Mining Industrial Modernity: A Story of Energy from Coal Seams to Corridors of Power

Friday, September 16, 2022

2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Victor Seow, a Harvard historian and the author of “Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia,” will be giving a lecture hosted by the History Department.

According to Timothy Mitchell, Seow’s work is “a brilliant account of energy and empire, industrial hubris, and ecological destruction told through the story of the coal capital of China.”

The lecture will address an issue currently central to discussions of the climate crisis: the use coal for energy. Focusing on how this issue developed in East Asia, Seow tells the story of “fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality.”