| This dissertation examines the cultural formation of solar energy in three U.S. sites---New York City, the Mojave Desert, and Detroit---from the perspective of visual culture and media studies. In explicating the visual and cultural practices that constitute the shaping of sunlight into solar energy, the dissertation provides a map to the ways in which solar power is perceived, accessed, generated, and governed in different communities and environments. These environments range from dense megacities to rural locales, and from sites of rapid infrastructural development to places where the grid is crumbling, becoming privatized, and being made anew.;As a whole, the dissertation argues that solar energy is not only an assemblage of technologies (most notably the solar panel or photovoltaic cell), but also the outcome of a broader process of visual and cultural mediation. In becoming what we know as solar energy or solar power, sunshine is mediated by cultural imaginaries and perceptions of the sun, by elements of built and so-called "natural" environments, by material and technological practices enacted to harness it and transform it into usable energy, and by the historical forces and social and political dynamics that give rise to and govern these practices. As the case studies illustrate, this process of sunlight's mediation into solar unfolds differently in different places, depending on the cultural, historical, political, and environmental forces at work in that place. In this way, the dissertation develops a new critical framework for understanding solar energy as a site-specific cultural practice, rather than a monolithic technology, leading to several key insights about the forces and debates that will shape our collective environmental future. |
