Casey A. Williams is a cultural theorist whose research examines the stories we tell about climate change and energy transition.Three questions motivate this work: Why do we still burn fossil fuels? How do we make sense of this practice in light of climate change? And how might we imagine post-fossil futures? Dr. Williams holds a PhD in Literature from Duke University. He is currently writing a book about the aesthetics of climate crisis and the depoliticization of climate change in contemporary US culture. He is also working on a project on renewable energy imaginaries in the US South, as well as several interdisciplinary projects studying the cultural impacts of renewable energy transitions across the globe. He has published work in Nature: Climate Change, Climate and Development, Radical Philosophy, Bare Life Review, and Polygraph, as well as in the New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Dissent, In These Times, and elsewhere. Dr. Williams is an expert in 20th- and 21st-century US Literature and Film, Environmental and Climate Justice, Marxism, and Critical Theory. Research and teaching interests also include labor movements and just transition, degrowth, and energy democracy.
Deeply committed to interdisciplinary work, Dr. Williams has organized several cross-campus initiatives since joining CES in 2023. With the artists at “More and More Futures,” Dr. Williams oversaw the development of an energy-themed worldbuidling game designed to provoke deep reflection on the role energy plays in our lives and the role we would like it to play in the future. And with Dr. Gökçe Günel, Dr. Williams secured a grant from the Rice Sustainability Institute to organize an “Energy Justice” workshop series for 2024-2025, exploring the themes “Just Transition,” “Energy Democracy,” “Energy Resilience,” and “Degrowth.” Dr. Williams is also a passionate teacher committed to inclusive, critical education within and beyond the university. He teaches “Environment, Culture, Society” each semester, “Science Fiction and Environment” in the Fall, and “Environmental Justice” in the Spring. Dr. Williams is the faculty mentor for an alternative spring break project on environmental justice in the Rio Grande Valley.
Beyond Rice, Dr. Williams belongs to several interdisciplinary research groups, including the Petrocultures Research Group and the After Oil Collective, works with labor unions to develop climate change education initiatives, and is an essayist writing about climate, energy, and labor politics in the US South and around the world.