American Energy Cinema (Paperback or Softback)

Historians investigate the relationships between film, culture, and energy.

American Energy Cinema explores how Hollywood movies have portrayed energy from the early film era to the present. Looking at classics like Giant, Silkwood, There Will Be Blood, and Matewan, and at quirkier fare like A Is for Atom and Convoy, it argues that films have both reflected existing beliefs and conjured new visions for Americans about the role of energy in their lives and their history.

The essays in this collection show how film provides a unique and informative lens to understand perceptions of energy production, consumption, and infrastructure networks. By placing films that prominently feature energy within historical context and analyzing them as historical objects, the contributing authors demonstrate how energy systems of all kinds are both integral to the daily life of Americans and inextricable from larger societal changes and global politics.

Robert Lifset is the Donald Keith Jones Associate Professor of History in the Honors College at the University of Oklahoma and the author of Power on the Hudson: Storm King Mountain and the Emergence of Modern American Environmentalism. Raechel Lutz teaches history and civics at the Wardlaw+Hartridge School. Sarah Stanford-McIntyre is assistant professor of engineering, ethics, and society at the University of Colorado Boulder.