The recent infrastructural turn in historical scholarship is poised to transform knowledge of empire in modern world history as well as histories of fossil fuel takeoff. Yet historians of the United States have largely approached questions of infrastructure and empire on separate tracks. This renders the imperial an implicit but unquestioned problem in histories of technology and the infrastructural a subterranean feature of US power. This small workshop-style conference responds to the premise that putting histories of empire and infrastructure into the same frame can illuminate the workings and outcomes of power. Among these are inequalities that persist into the present, as well as the overlooked historical foundations of the unfolding climate crisis.
The conference brings together the disparate historiographies of empire, infrastructure, and energy history. By linking the history of fossil-fuel dependence and promoting infrastructures to contemporaneous histories of imperialist power relations, this conference aims to foster a deeper and wider understanding of the material and ideological roots of these relations and their role in launching modern fossil fuel regimes.
This conference centers on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a span marked by the U.S. ascent to superpower status and, not coincidentally, a massive global upswing in fossil fuel use. We are especially interested in the U.S. history angle to this topic because of the preponderance of U.S. power in the making of the high emissions “American century.” However, the aim of situating U.S. history more fully in global history means that we are as interested in imperial transitions as in energy transitions, and we welcome papers that decenter the United States and provide crucial international, transnational, and comparative context.
In addition to gathering historians who work across an array of geographies, we aim to gather historians across a variety of methods and fields, including diplomatic, military, and political history; social, intellectual, and cultural history; and histories of colonialism, postcolonialism, indigeneity, labor, capitalism, technology, energy, landscape architecture, and the environment. We invite papers addressing each conference main theme: empire, infrastructure, and energy.
This conference is being supported by the Birmingham-Illinois Partnership for Discovery, Engagement, and Education; funding for travel will be available. ABD and early career scholars encouraged. Please submit a brief abstract, no more than 250 words, and a c.v. no more than two pages, by Aug. 15, 2026, to: n.cardon@bham.ac.uk, mad80@ilinois.edu, hoganson@illinois.edu, justin.jackson@umass.edu.
