Joel Auerbach

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Joel Auerbach (he/him) is a PhD student in Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a BA in Cognitive Science from Vassar College (2015) and an MA in Communication Studies from McGill University (2019; supervisor: Darin Barney). His current research examines concepts of uncertainty and prediction in the late 19th and early 20th century. Contact: joel.auerbach@berkeley.edu 

 

Projects 

Fragmented Abundance: Disjunction and Uncertainty in a Solar Economy (MA thesis; McGill University, completed 2019) examined the infrastructural management of uncertainty on the California electrical grid, using this case to pose questions about political economy, planning, and revolutionary form via Marx, Deleuze and Guattari, Harney and Moten, et al. The project was supervised by Darin Barney and supported by a Wolfe Graduate Fellowship (McGill University, 2018) and a General Fellowship for Graduate Study (Vassar College, 2017). 

 

Publications 

Joel Auerbach. (Forthcoming January 2021). “The Abstract Grid of Distribution: Solar Economy Beyond the Fuel Question,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 120 (1). 

Conference papers

Joel Auerbach. (2019). “Are We Duped by Environmentalism? Skepticism, Teaching, and the Human in Levinas,” 14th Annual Conference of the North American Levinas Society: Vulnerability, Drake University, Des Moines, IA 

Joel Auerbach. (2019). “The Uncertain Sun: Solar Energy, Information, and Capital,” Humanities Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference: Regarding Uncertainty, Concordia University, Montreal, QC 

Joel Auerbach. (2019). “The Concept of Potentiality as an Ecocritical Analytic,” Art History & Communication Studies Graduate Conference: Potentials of Ecocriticism, McGill University, Montreal, QC 

 

Activity 

Joel assisted with developing the curriculum for After Oil School 2: “Solarity,” a three-day energy humanities “school” on solar futures, hosted by the Petrocultures Research Group at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. He created a wide-ranging introductory bibliography on the theme: http://afteroil.ca/solarity/solarity-a-bibliography/.