Writer

My areas of research and teaching are American Studies, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Energy Humanities, Environmental Humanities, Infrastructural Studies, Open-Access Publishing, The Post-Apocalyptic Mode, Science Fiction Studies, Social Justice, Speculative Literature, Transmedia Worldbuilding, and World-Systems Theory. I have published broadly on energy, infrastructure, film, literature, and science fiction.

Remainders of the American Century: Post-Apocalyptic Novels in the Age of US Decline will be published in June 2021 by Wesleyan University Press. It is available for pre-order now.

An Ecotopian Lexicon (with Matthew Schneider-Mayerson) has been reviewed in Ancillary Review of Books, Art Review, Edge Effects, ISLE, Language & Ecology, La Repubblica, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Yorker, Science Magazine, and Vogue Poland. You can also listen to historian Lance Thurner interview me and Matthew in a New Books Network Podcast and listen to anthropologist and herbalist Charis Boke, visual artist Michelle Kuen Suet Fung, and Sam Solnick of the University of Liverpool (all contributors) discuss the book on the University of Minnesota Press Podcast.

If you are interested in reading any of my work and do not have access, please contact me <brent.ryan.bellamy@gmail.com>. I would be happy to send you a copy of my work.

Articles

Cover of Mediations Time and the Labor of the Negative, image: Graffiti of a police officer with pepper spray, spraying butterflies.

Cover of Paradoxa: SF NOW, sign says "no exit"

Cover of Resilience: A concrete aqueduct with powerlines and a cloudy sky.

Cover of Polygraph 28 with images of energy quest and energy crisis games.

“The Scientist as Hero”: Representing Climate and Science as Politics in the Mars Trilogy. Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities special issue on Climate Realism edited by Lynn Badia, Marija Cetinic, and Jeff Diamanti, vol. 7 no. 2-3, 2020, pp. 156-177.
Non-Capitalist, Market-Based Development? Renewable Energy Infrastructure in China. Polygraph 28: Marxism and Climate Change, edited by Michael Gaffney, Claire Ravenscroft, and Casey Williams. 2020, pp. 64-101. Co-written with Joseph Ren.
Violent (Non-)Labour: On the Social Reproduction of the Clone in Carola Dibbell’s The Only Ones. Canadian Review of American Studies vol. 50, no. 2, 2020, pp 257-275.
Neuromancer: The Cultural Logic of Late Fossil Capital? Open Library of the Humanities special issue Powering the Future: Energy Resources in Science Fiction and Fantasy eds. Caroline Edwards and Graeme Macdonald. Vol. 5, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1-26.
Solar Accumulation: The Worlds-Systems Theory of The Expanse. Science Fiction Studies, vol. 45, part 3, November 2018, pp. 515-529. Co-written with Sean O’Brien.
The Reproductive Imperative of The Road. The Cormac McCarthy Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, Winter 2018, pp. 38-54.
Reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three Californias Triptych as Petrofiction. Western American Literature, vol. 51, no. 4, March 2017, pp. 409-427.
Introduction: Toward a Theory of Resource Aesthetics. Postmodern Culture special issue Resource Aesthetics, vol. 26, no. 2, January 2016,https://doi.org/10.1353/pmc.2016.0010. Co-written with Michael O’Driscoll and Mark Simpson.
When Energy is the Focus: Methodology, Politics, and Pedagogy—A Conversation with Brent Ryan Bellamy, Stephanie LeMenager, and Imre Szeman. Postmodern Culture special issue Resources Aesthetics, vol. 26, no. 2, January 2016,https://doi.org/10.1353/pmc.2016.0004.
Into Eternity, On our Waste Containments and Energy Futures. Paradoxa: Studies in Literary Genres, vol.26, Fall 2014, pp. 145-158.
Figuring Terminal Crisis in Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming. Mediations, vol. 28, no. 1, Fall 2014, pp. 19-34.
Tear into the Guts: Whitman, Steinbeck, Springsteen, and the Durability of Lost Souls on the Road. Canadian Review of American Studies, vol. 41, no. 2, 2012, pp. 223-243.

Books

Cover of After Oil showing an image of an energy graph in vibrant yellow against a black background

Cover of Materialism and the Critique of Energy

Cover of Remainders of the American Century with a Clyfford Still abstract painting

Remainders of the American Century: Post-Apocalyptic Novels in the Age of U.S. Decline. Wesleyan University Press, Spring 2021.
An Ecotopian Lexicon Against the Anthropocene, edited by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Brent Ryan Bellamy. University of Minnesota Press, October 2019, 336 pp.
Materialism and the Critique of Energy, edited by Brent Ryan Bellamy and Jeff Diamanti. MCM′ Publication, Spring 2018, 686 pp.
After Oil, edited by Imre Szeman, Lynn Badia, Jeff Diamanti, Michael O’Driscoll, and Mark Simpson. Petrocultures Research Group, 2016, 80 pp. Co-written.

Chapters

Cover of Transportation and the Culture of Climate Change, weeds overgrow a rusty chassis

Cover of the Cambridge History of Science Fiction

Cover of The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science

The Aesthetic Textuality of Oil. Palgrave Handbook on Twentieth/Twenty-First Century Literature and Science. Edited by Ahuja, Neel et al. Palgrave, 2020, pp. 63-77.
Remainders of the Fossil Regime: Automobility Regression in Three Post-Apocalyptic Novels. Transportation and the Culture of Climate Change: Accelerating Ride to Global Crisis. Edited by Tatiana Prorovkova-Konard. West Virginia University Press, October 2020.
…or Bust: Science Fiction and the Bomb (1945-1960). The Cambridge History of Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan and Carl Link. Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 218-231.
Petrorealism. Fueling Culture: 101 Words for Energy and Environment, edited by Imre Szeman, Patricia Yaeger, and Jennifer Wenzel. Fordham University Press, 2017, pp. 259-262.
The Inertia of Energy: Pipelines and Temporal Politics. Time, Globalization, and Human Experience, edited by Paul Huebener, Susie O’Brien, Tony Porter, Liam Stockdale, and Rachel Zhou. Routledge, 2016, pp. 145-159.
Life After People: Science Faction and Ecological Futures. Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan and Kim Stanley Robinson. Wesleyan University Press, 2014, pp. 192-205. Co-written with Imre Szeman.