Post-Carbon Victorian Studies: Energy, Literature, and the Archaeology of Fossil Power

Abstract: This guest editor's introduction examines the twin roots of Victorian studies and the energy humanities in post-1945 Anglo-America. It argues for a rapprochement between the two subfields by highlighting how Victorian studies has been structured and limited by the energy regimes it investigates. In the process, it introduces new hermeneutics for an energy-conscious criticism of the long nineteenth century—a "post-carbon Victorian studies"—and surveys some possible disciplinary futures in the wake of our overheated present. While defending the heuristic value of classifications such as "the coal era," "the steam era," and "fossil modernity," the introduction does not isolate the Victorian age as a bounded energy regime. Instead, it proposes that the energy humanities are vital to undisciplining Victorian studies more broadly, with attention to transimperial histories of race and globalization across the north–south hemispheric divide.