Special issue
The coordinators of the Special issue section offer readers a series of additional contributions to shed light on a common topic. They combine rigor and readability in an effort to bring historical research to life, as well as to provide a wider audience with the keys needed to understand the past and through it—whether directly or indirectly—the present.
A way out of darkness: Thinking about the future of Spain through the promises of electricity and energy abundance, 1898–1931
This article historicizes electricity and energy abundance and their relation to the reconfiguration of political power in a context of (self-perceived) national decline.
From the Allegheny to the Irrawaddy: American oil drillers in colonial Burma
Colonial Burma was once a major center of world petroleum production in the early 20th Century. A notable group in the oilfields of Burma was the working-class American oil drillers, most of whom with ties to the oil regions of western Pennsylvania.
Households, gender, and energies: Issues and perspectives
By connecting two historiographies that, with a few exceptions, have generally ignored one another—gender history and the history of energy—this introductory article for the special issue “Home and Hearth: Gender and Energies within the Domestic Space, 19th-21st Centuries” highlights the fruitful
What a housewife should know: popularising electric devices in the Barcelona of the nineteen-thirties
In the advanced countries, the electrification of houses was one step further in the wave of modernization resulting from the sudden arrival of electricity in all areas of daily life at the beginning of the 1930s.
Relieving the housewife: Gender and the promise of geothermal district heating in Reykjavík, 1930s–1970s
Between 1939 and 1944, the City of Reykjavík in Iceland built a geothermal district heating utility that enabled the inhabitants to transition from coal to geothermal heating.
Commercial strategies to promote domestic gas and electricity consumption, and the role of women (Lisbon, 1891-1970s)
By the 1870s the gas industry had no competitors for lighting, turning it into a near monopoly. However, by the 1880s the possibility of using electricity for street lighting changed the equation and the threat for gas industry was huge.
The breakthrough of the 21 degrees culture in Denmark. Undoing and doing gender in Danish home making after 1945
The energizing of Danish homes after World War II introduced a new heating culture, which paved the way for new lifestyles.
The uptake of new domestic energy technology in the 1950s-1960s: how women got involved in France and the Netherlands
Access to clean and affordable energy services and technologies is a global concern as stated in global conventions and goals. Different energy needs and interests are identified between men and women.