August will see six academics at the top of their game come together in Dresden for Petrocultures 2026 to discuss THE SOLAR GRID and “its many affordances for thinking through techno-optimism, energy, colonization, etc.” as associate professor Stacey Balkan recently put it in an email. The panel discussion is set to include:
- Dominic Boyer, Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University (author of No More Fossils, Energopolitics: Winds and Power in the Anthropocene, and Understanding Media: A Popular Philosophy).
- Stacey Balkan, Associate Professor in the Department of English at Florida Atlantic University (author of Rogues in the Postcolony: Narrating Extraction and Itinerancy in India and Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice).
- Frederic Caille, Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Savoie Mont Blanc (author of L'invention de l'énergie solaire and La figure du sauveteur: Naissance du citoyen secoureur en France, 1780-1914).
- Swaralipi Nandi, Associate Professor of English at Loyola Academy (co-editor of Oil Fictions: World Literature and Our Contemporary Petrosphere, The Postnational Fantasy: Essays on Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitics, and Science Fiction, and Spectacles of Blood: A Study of Violence and Masculinity in Postcolonial Films).
- Imre Szeman, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough (author of Futures of the Sun: The Struggle over Renewable Life, Zones of Instability: Literature, Postcolonialism, and the Nation, and Energy Culture: Art and Theory on Oil and Beyond).
- Brianna Anderson, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas in El Paso (creator of The Environmental Comics Digital Database).
I too will be in Dresden for this meeting of minds, which I am very much looking forward to and immensely humbled by.