Questions about the use and abuse of energy have become central to how we think about climate change, the environment, and the future of society. This module focuses on a key aspect of this by addressing what Amitav Ghosh has called ‘the Oil Encounter’ in literature and film. Such encounters give rise to ‘petrofictions’, fictions about petroleum/oil. The literary and cinematic petrofictions on this module explore different ways of telling the story of oil in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Sometimes this is a story of collapse, dystopia and dwindling resources that calls attention to our unsustainable uses of energy. This is the story that often dominates the Western view, but we will also explore non-Western accounts of energy extraction in which oil production impinges violently on the lives of individuals and communities.

You will be asked to engage with oil as a slippery subject that can take on different forms across experimental texts, world literature, social realism, historical fiction, and apocalyptic futures. In order to engage effectively with this range of narratives, you will be guided through some of the key histories of oil and introduced to recent scholarship in the energy humanities and petrocriticism. You will also be asked to reflect on the role of energy in everyday life and to engage with ideas of carbon literacy and energy citizenship.                     

• investigate oil and energy as narrative themes in literature and cinema
• analyse petrofictions in order to understand the use and abuse of energy in society
• compare different narrative explorations of oil with their social and historical contexts
• evaluate the basic concepts and concerns of petrocriticism and the energy humanities

This module will be delivered through a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous activities, as part of this programme’s blended provision, which will include on-campus and online teaching and support.

The precise mode of delivery and details – subject to Welsh Government and Public Health Wales guidance – of the teaching and support activities will be made available at the start of the semester via Learning Central.

Academic skills: the particular skills of the module involve reading and understanding how different media (in this case, literature and film) adapt to, negotiate with and transform the culture from which they emerge, while engaging with a wider variety of texts by diverse authors. Analysis of the complex relationship between different forms of media in generating meaning will also be an important facet of this module. This requires careful scholarship, sensitivity to language through close reading and a broader historical awareness of social change.

Employability skills: these include the ability to synthesise information, participate in group-based discussion, to negotiate different and conflicting standpoints, to communicate ideas and to produce clear, informed arguments in a professional manner. Student-led research will encourage skills of information collation, selection and synthesis. Transferable skills to be gained from this module include the ability to perform close analysis of literary texts and films with particular attention to the cultural, socioeconomic and historical contexts of oil and energy.  

The methods of summative assessment for this module are detailed in the table below.

Formative work to be submitted before each summative assessment: you can choose between submitting, as appropriate, an essay plan/structure, synopses of essay topic options (if undecided) or sample paragraph/s; for creative assignments, you can submit working drafts of parts of your composition, as arranged with the workshop convenor.

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR REASSESSMENT IN THIS MODULE:
As with School policy, failed or unsubmitted assessments can be retaken during the August resit period.

Indicative Syllabus:

• George Miller, dir., Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) [film]
• Helon Habila, Oil on Water (2010)
• Stephen Gaghan, dir., Syriana (2005) [film]
• Linda Hogan, Mean Spirit (1990)
• Nawal El Saadawi, Love in the Kingdom of Oil (1992)
• Vicki Jarrett, Always North, (2019)
• Peter Berg, Deepwater Horizon (2016)
• Tom McCarthy, Satin Island (2015)

Content warning: please be aware that several of the books/topics discussed in this module deal with difficult themes (including racism, misogyny and graphic depictions of physical and sexual violence), which some students may find distressing. If you have any concerns about this, please contact the module leader for advice.