For her rigorous research and original approach to connecting electrical energy and culture production in Brazilian literature and art from 1930s to the present, Associate Professor Victoria Saramago received a $60,000 Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) on January 10. Her book project “Against the Current: Electricity and Cultural Production in Brazil Anthropocene” will investigate the multiple ways in which Brazilian artistic practices have shaped perceptions of the production and consumption of electrical energy, and how electricity has enabled, affected, and, sometimes, destroyed cultural objects.

“Professor Saramago is working at the cutting edge of energy humanities, an emerging field of scholarship that explores the interplay between energy systems and cultural formations,” said Neil Brenner, the Lucy Flower Professor in the Department of Sociology and Chair of the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU). “Her new book project will further enliven and inspire transdisciplinary discussions on energy, environment and global capitalist modernity that are animating our work in CEGU, in which Professor Saramago serves as a key faculty member.”

Saramago thinks the collaboration among CEGU faculty members and its new programs place UChicago at the forefront of environmental research. In her view, CEGU will revolutionize the way environmental studies are conducted at UChicago and expand the importance of transdisciplinary exchanges.

Read more about the award in an article by Sara Patterson on the Division of the Humanities website.↗