Walter Gordon

Working at the intersection of African American literary studies and the environmental humanities, Walter Gordon studies the links among race, literature, energy and ecology, particularly in relation to questions of labor and theories of modernity.

Most recently, Gordon served as the 2021-22 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Public Energy Humanities at the University of Alberta, in collaboration with the Petrocultures Research Group and Transitions in Energy, Culture and Society. Raised in Berkeley, California, he received his MA and PhD from the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and attended Oberlin College as an undergraduate.

Gordon is currently working on two main projects: a digital, interactive adaptation of Shirley Graham Du Bois’ 1941 tragedy Dust to Earth, and a monograph titled Prime Movers: Energy and Modernity in African American Literature, which tracks the interlinked cultural legacies of King Coal and Jim Crow and highlights other entanglements of race and energy across the 20th century.