Dr. Robert Johnson

Contact Information

Dr. Robert Johnson

College: School of Arts, Letters, and Sciences

Department: Social & Psychological Sciences

[email protected]

(858)642-8408


Education

UC Irvine - PHD - History
I am a historian, literary critic, and theorist. My scholarship centers on issues related to energy, the environment, and climate change; and it cuts a wide swath across a variety of subjects, including technology, media studies, the novel, whale oil, pop culture, advertising, and the modern ritual of hot yoga. My main goal has been to retell the history of the modern world as a story emerging from a unique (if now banal) set of cultural practices related to energy production and consumption and colonial structures of life. My writings to this effect include two books and a forthcoming one, Mineral Rites: An Archaeology of the Fossil Economy (Johns Hopkins UP 2019), Carbon Nation: Fossil Fuels in the Making of American Culture (UP Kansas 2014), and The Colonial Climate: How We Made (and Unmade) the World's Finest Climate in San Diego, California, 1846-Present. Each of these illustrates in a dfferent way how contemporary energy infrastructures and coloniall practices shape the everyday textures of life that we take for granted, including the rituals we move through, the architecture we inhabit, and the artifacts we touch. My scholarship illustrates, in what are sometimes surprising ways, how our modern entanglements with energy and nature inform the deepest layers of the body, the psyche, and our ideologies (albeit in ways stratified by class, race, gender, and region). Like my writing, my teaching has also taken a unique trajectory. I started out my career teaching at traditional public institutions. I taught for six years at the New College of Florida (the State's Honors College) where I was originally tenured as a professor. Before that, I taught for two years at UC Santa Barbara as a Faculty Fellow and several years at UC Irvine as a Chancellor's Fellow (while completing my PHD in US History). Today, I am equally at home in both the traditional classroom and the digital learning environment, working with traditional college students and nontraditional demographics. Currently, I am Director of the Honors Fellows for Social Change, and Professor of History at National University in San Diego, California.

Publications

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (December 01, 2025). “Making Sure Nobody Walks in LA”: A Lesson on Media Theory and Petroleum Advertisements. Teaching the Energy Humanities.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (July 01, 2022). Carbon Democracy: Unfinished Business.. Energy Humanities Online.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (March 01, 2019). Mineral Rites: An Archaeology of the Fossil Economy.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (January 01, 2018). Industry, Technology, Energy: The Technological and Thermodynamic Revolutions in the Writings of Karl Marx.. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Marx, Eds. Andrew P.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (January 01, 2017). Carbon Nation: Fossil Fuels in the Making of American Culture.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (January 01, 2017). Embodiment, or the Loving Intimacies of Carbon.. In Fueling Culture: 101 Words for Energy and Envir.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (December 01, 2016). Energy Slaves: Carbon Technologies, Climate Change, and the Stratified History of the Fossil Economy. American Quartlery.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (January 01, 2016). Embodiment, or the Loving Intimacies of Carbon. Fueling Culture: Energy, History, Politics.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (January 01, 2016). A Peculiarly Valuable Oil: Energy and the Ecology of Production on an American Whale Ship. Industrial Archaeology.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (February 01, 2015). Crude Reality. The History Teacher.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (January 01, 2014). A Peculiarly Valuable Oil: Energy and the Ecology of Production on an American Whale Ship.. Special Issue on Energy and Industry. Industrial A.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (January 01, 2014). Carbon Nation: Fossil Fuels in the Making of American Culture.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (December 01, 2010). An Upthrust into Barbarism: Coal, Trauma, and the Origins of the Modern Self, 1885-1951.. Journal of American Culture.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (July 01, 2006). Globalizing the Harlem Renaissance: Irish, Mexican, and 'Negro' Renaissances in Survey Graphic.. Journal of Global History.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (June 01, 2002). 'A Whole Synthesis of His Time': Political Ideology and Cultural Politics in the Writings of William Carlos Williams, 1929-1939.. American Quarterly.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (n.d.). 'Typical of Her Race': Cultural Pluralism and the Editorial Records of Survey Graphic..

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (n.d.). The Colonial Climate: How We Made (and Unmade) the World's Finest Climate in San Diego, CA, 1846-Present.

  • Dr. Robert M. Johnson. (n.d.). The Landfill. Solarities: Elemental Encounters and Refractions.

Presentations

  • (2025-07-09). Uneven Atmospheres: The Colonial Climate Reconsidered. Baltimore, MD.
  • (2024-07-01). Keynote Speaker. The Colonial Climate. Infrastructures of Extraction, Infrastructures of Representation. British Academy and Southampto.
  • (2023-10-01). The Renewable Normal: 3rd Working Group for After Oil. Toronto, Canada.
  • (2023-05-01). The Toronto Workshop: Public-Facing Writing for Academics. Toronto, Canada.
  • (2023-02-01). Episode 6: Volatile Trajectories: Climate Crisis + Energy Transitions. Petrocultures Panel Podcast.
  • (2023-01-01). Keynote Talk: Reflecting Oil: Art-Based Research on Oil Transitionings. Vienna, Austria.
  • (2015-08-19). After Oil School. Invited in Spring 2015 for Participant in 5-day Workshop. Edmonton, Canada.
  • (2015-04-28). How'd We Become a Carbon Nation. Progressive Radio Network. Radio Interview.
  • (2015-04-15). The Eroticism of Fossil Fuels. California American Studies Association. Fullerton, California.
  • (2014-07-15). Modernity's Ecology: Fossil Fuels, World History, and America's Great Divergence. World History Association. San Jose, Costa Rica.