Title & Author:

Oil culture / Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden, editors.

Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2014]

Description:

xxxiii, 424 pages ; 26 cm

Notes:
Some chapters originally appeared in the Journal of American Studies, Volume 46, Special Issue 02 (May 2012).
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Oil's origins of modernization. Whale oil culture, consumerism, and modern conservation / Heidi Scott ; The wizard of oil : Abraham James, the Harmonial wells, and the psychometric history of the oil industry / Rochelle Raineri Zuck ; Picturing a crude past : primitivism, public art, and corporate oil promotion in the United States / Ross Barrett ; A short history of oil cultures; or, the marriage of catastrophe and exuberance / Frederick Buell -- Oil's golden age : literature, film, and propaganda. Essential driving and vital cars : American automobile culture in World War II / Sarah Frohardt-Lane ; Fossil-fuel futurity : oil in Giant / Daniel Worden ; "Liquid modernity" : Sundown in Pawhuska, Oklahoma / Hanna Musiol ; From Isfahan to Ingolstadt : Bertolucci's La via del petrolio and the global culture of neorealism / Georgiana Banita -- The local and global territories of oil. Aramco's frontier story : the Arabian American Oil Company and creative mapping in postwar Saudi Arabia / Chad H. Parker ; Oil frontiers : the Niger Delta and the Gulf of Mexico / Michael Watts ; Petro-magic-realism revisited : unimagining and reimagining the Niger Delta / Jennifer Wenzel ; Refined politics : petroleum products, neoliberalism, and the ecology of entrepreneurial life / Matthew T. Huber ; Gendering oil : tracing western petrosexual relations / Sheena Wilson -- Exhibiting oil. Mixing oil and water : naturalizing offshore oil platforms in American aquariums / Dolly Jørgensen ; Petroaesthetics and landscape photography : New topographics, Edward Burtynsky, and the culture of peak oil / Catherine Zuromskis ; Fossil, fuel : manifesto for the post-oil museum / Stephanie LeMenager -- The future of and without oil. Retrofutures and petrofutures : oil, scarcity, limit / Gerry Canavan ; Crude aesthetics : the politics of oil documentaries / Imre Szeman ; Oil and dust : theorizing Reza Negarestani's Cyclonopedia / Melanie Doherty ; Imagining angels on the gulf / Ruth Salvaggio.

Summary:

In the 150 years since the birth of the petroleum industry oil has saturated our culture, fueling our cars and wars, our economy and policies. But just as thoroughly, culture saturates oil. So what exactly is "oil culture"? This book pursues an answer through petrocapitalism's history in literature, film, fine art, wartime propaganda, and museum displays. Investigating cultural discourses that have taken shape around oil, these essays compose the first sustained attempt to understand how petroleum has suffused the Western imagination. The contributors to this volume examine the oil culture nexus, beginning with the whale oil culture it replaced and analyzing literature and films such as Giant, Sundown, Bernardo Bertolucci's La Via del Petrolio, and Ben Okri's "What the Tapster Saw"; corporate art, museum installations, and contemporary photography; and in apocalyptic visions of environmental disaster and science fiction. By considering oil as both a natural resource and a trope, the authors show how oil's dominance is part of culture rather than an economic or physical necessity. Oil Culture sees beyond oil capitalism to alternative modes of energy production and consumption.-- Provided by Publisher

ISBN:

9780816689682 (hc ; alk. paper)
0816689687 (hc ; alk. paper)
9780816689743 (pb ; alk. paper)
0816689741 (pb ; alk. paper)
(ebook)
9781452943954

Subject:

Petroleum industry and trade United States History.
Manners and customs.
Petroleum industry and trade.
Erdölindustrie
Gesellschaftsleben
Brauch
United States Social life and customs.
États-Unis Mœurs et coutumes.
United States.
USA

Form/genre:

History.

Added entries:

Barrett, Ross, 1977- editor.
Worden, Daniel, 1978- editor.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 292846
Call No.: BIB 237372
Status: Available