Warren Dennis is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Boston University and a 2023-2024 Consortium Research Fellow.
How has gender shaped the development of energy policy in the United States? This question has driven my research over the past few years, leading me down an array of interesting avenues. Ultimately, I’ve found myself drawn to the political and cultural shift surrounding the production and use of fossil fuels and alternative energy systems between 1960 and 2000. In my research, I argue that widespread concerns over masculine and national vigor provided the dominant cultural frame for the tabling of renewable energy and the increased consumption and production of coal, oil, and nuclear power—even when those choices put American workers and families at risk. This story both underscores and reorients the prevailing historical interpretations of two critical developments in recent United States history: how fossil fuels conditioned Americans’ identities with one another and with the world; and how conservative ideology shaped the major energy policy decisions since the 1970s.
American energy history has grown substantially as a field over the past decade, much of it in response to the climate crisis. The fuel shortages of the 1970s have served as a popular jumping off point for exploring this history, with most accounts centering on the political maneuvers of presidential administrations and the global economic impacts of the crises. But a growing number of historians are exploring the cultural and religious contours of this period of energy transition, ranging from the role of domestic ideals in shaping energy consumption to the importance of evangelicalism in determining energy production and use. Building off this recent scholarship, I argue that concerns about masculinity structured debates surrounding energy policy much more fundamentally than historians have so far explored.
While gender has long been a fruitful tool for analyzing policy history, there has been surprisingly little written on the relationship between energy policy and gender in the United States. Indeed, while there has been significant scholarship centered on the ‘emasculation’ of America in the 1970s and the relationship between conservatism and masculinity, it has rarely incorporated American energy production and consumption. My work aims to help address this important component in understanding energy decisions, emphasizing the gendered assumptions coloring the desire of accessible, inexpensive energy on the one hand and the protection of individual and ecological health on the other.
The scope of this project has led me to archives all over the country, and without the funding from the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, I would not have been able to develop as strong an argument as I have. The Consortium’s fellowship allowed me to visit MIT Distinctive Collections, the Library of Congress, and the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. I also received an invitation to travel to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas, but I was ultimately unable to visit this past year. Each of these archives hold immense collections of material, and I’m enormously grateful to have had the chance to explore them.
The Library of Congress was particularly useful in completing work on two major areas of my research. The League of Women Voters papers presented an incredible wealth of information about environmental activism at the local and national level, as well as the disagreements over policy and strategy that the energy crisis fostered. The correspondence and publications of this massive organization help showcase how many American women grappled with issues in this period that could at times seem at odds—energy access, economic security, public health, and clean air and water. The second key area involved tracing the conservative political shift in energy resource management from the 1960s through the 1990s. Drawing from the papers of Russell Train and Russell Peterson, I examined the growing distance many conservationists felt with the changing Republican party, as leaders began to treat policies promoting environmental protection and economic growth as conflicting rather than complimentary. The William Rusher papers were especially valuable in providing insight to right-wing views on energy and environment during these decades, including those of Donald P. Hodel, President Reagan’s energy and interior secretary, a key but often overlooked figure in modern conservative politics.
The MIT archives provided records involving science policy and activism, including those of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Frank Press, Henry Kendall, and Carroll Wilson. These were integral to fleshing out the debate between funding nuclear or solar power as preferable alternatives to fossil fuels. Finally, the Rubenstein Library holds the Louis H. Roddis papers, and this collection offered valuable insight into the energy and utilities industries’ priorities and challenges during this period. It also holds substantial information concerning the attempt to build floating nuclear power plants in the 1970s, a topic that has spawned an exciting side-project to my dissertation work.
I am tremendously grateful to the archivists and librarians who helped guide my work and ensured I had fruitful and enjoyable visits. I’m also thrilled that I got the chance to hear about the research the other Consortium Fellows were doing, and I’ve long enjoyed engaging with like-minded colleagues through Consortium working groups. Altogether, this experience has been incredibly rewarding, and I’m so happy to have had the opportunity to participate in the Consortium Fellowship.