Energy History Online is a free educational website serving teachers and students of United States and global energy history.
Leading energy historians have curated teaching units on the site appropriate for classroom use. These teaching units can serve as the basis for seminar and lecture courses in energy history, or to add energy history content to general history classes. Teaching materials include textual documents, photographs, video, and other media.
Each curated teaching unit includes a short overview, primary sources with historical context and questions, a timeline of related events, and additional reading suggestions. The teaching units use the history of different fuels to explore broader issues related to law and property, corporate power, labor and working conditions, gender and technology, architecture and design, and government planning. The broader social and cultural context of energy, and the role of societal decisions in shaping technological systems, is a recurring historical theme.
Individual primary source items also are available in a library of teaching items. Users can sort the individual items by fuel type, energy sector, date, document type, and keywords. The library includes additional documentary materials, beyond those used by individual teaching units, and will grow over time.
Energy History Online is an evolving project. To provide feedback or to suggest an item for the library, please contact energyhistory@gmail.com.
Project Coordinator:
Paul Sabin, Yale University
Graduate Coordinator:
Molly Harris, Yale University
Faculty Contributors:
Daniel Barber, University of Pennsylvania
B. Alex Beasley, University of Texas at Austin
Bathsheba Demuth, Brown University
James Feldman, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
Christopher Jones, Arizona State University
Gabriel Lee, Yale University
Robert Lifset, University of Oklahoma
Trish Kahle, Georgetown University Qatar
Ian Miller, Harvard University
Chad Montrie, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Abby Spinak, Harvard University
Christopher Wells, Macalaster College
This website would not be possible without the terrific research assistance provided by Connor Compton, Jamie Cooper, Hilary Griggs, Molly Harris, Clara Ma, Bennet Parten, Camden Smithtro, Christopher Sung, Walter Thulin, and Ben Zdencanovic.
Technical support and design has been provided by Pamela Patterson and the staff of the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning and YaleSites.
Generous financial support has been provided by Yale College Environmental Studies, Yale Department of History, and the Rosenkranz Award for Pedagogical Advancement.