Introduction to Topics in History (292-0-26)

Topic

Fossil Fuels and Climate Change in Palestine/Israe

Instructors

Shira Pinhas
Crowe 5-167
Office Hours: Tuesday 10:30 – 12:20
Shira Pinhas is a Weinberg College Postdoctoral Fellow in the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies. She is a historian of the social and material history of Palestine/Israel and the broader Levant region. Her research focuses on understanding how new infrastructures and technologies, along with transnational flows of energy, materials, capital, and labor shaped political hierarchies and social subjectivities during the twentieth century. Before joining Northwestern, Pinhas was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer at Princeton University’s Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, and a Polonsky Postdoctoral Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. She received her PhD from Tel Aviv University in 2023.

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-410: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

Fossil Fuels and Climate Change in Palestine/Israel: A Global Perspective

With a warming rate double the global average and half of the world's oil reserves, the Middle East is a pivotal site for understanding the history, present, and future of climate change. Although Israel/Palestine is not today an oil-producing country, historically it was imagined differently: in the 19th and 20th centuries it was considered a promising frontier for oil exploration and became a regional hub of fossil fuel infrastructures, channeling Middle Eastern oil and North African gas to Europe. This seminar examines how the rise of fossil fuels and the dynamics of climate change played out in Palestine/Israel and shaped both the Zionist-Palestinian struggle and Palestine's place within the Middle East. We will consider how the Middle East became "Middle" through the interplay between energy sources, infrastructures, and colonial powers. We will explore how carbonization in the region gave rise to new forms of political rule, reshaping identities and altering environments, and how seemingly mundane infrastructures - from coaling depots to automobility - enabled and managed colonial power as well as resistance to it. Drawing on archival materials alongside fiction, poetry, and film in Arabic and Hebrew (all provided in English translation), we will analyze the intimate, everyday, and affective dimensions of carbonization and

warming, exploring how these forces shaped subjectivities and societies. Finally, we will consider how different notions of heat and cooling technologies were tied to specific constructions of gender, race, and class.

Learning Objectives

Debunk common myths about energy transitions; Understand the historical complexities of the transition to fossil fuels and climate change; Debunk common myths about oil in the Middle East; Understand how different historical actors experienced and understood carbonization and warming.

Evaluation Method

Discussion Leaders: 10%

Class Materials (Suggested)

Materials will be provided by instructor.

Class Notes

History Major Concentration(s): Asia/Middle East, Africa/Middle East
History Minor Concentration(s): Middle East

Class Attributes

Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Registration is restricted to History Majors and Minors only until the end of pre-registration, after which time enrollment will be open to everyone who has taken the prerequisites (if any)