WELCOME
This is the homepage for Sarah Stanford-McIntyre. I am am an Assistant Professor in the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics & Society at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I am an environmental historian using digital tools to map the long-term economic, social, and environmental impact of extractive industry. My current digital project “Mapping Oil” uses the power of new mapping softwares and data visualization tools to connect seemingly disparate and unrelated industry data.
NAVIGATION
- Work I have done with GIS and other software to visualize industrialization’s intertwined costs and benefits can be found under “Book” and “Maps” in the navigation bar at the top of the page.
- Recent map posts are searchable via tags.
- My short films, blog posts, and other non-academic writing can be found under the “Media” tab.
- Syllabi and content for “Global Energy Crises” and other courses can be found under “Teaching.”
FAQ
Why oil? Why maps?
MAPS
Research into the flows of money, people, and raw materials that make up the US oil industry
BIB AND FURTHER READING
Book reviews, recommendations, and citations
OTHER PROJECTS
Towers of Debt
NOTIFICATIONS
Contact me directly or sign up to receive email notifications when new updates are live
VISUALIZING OIL IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Observing extractive infrastructures and heavy industry invokes a range of human emotions. These are highly variable depending upon personal experience. A miner or roughneck might alternately feel pride, excitement, or frustration when looking at their job sites. In contrast, a committed environmentalist or devoted artist might feel horror or disgust when surveying working oilfields or a refinery set upon the horizon.
The spatial layout of a refinery or the surveyed property lines in a West Texas oil field reflect the logistical needs of a variety of industries. They also represent an unconscious human relationship with the land, reflecting the tastes, values, aspirations, and anxieties of the people and communities who constructed these structures.
In West Texas’s decades-old oilfields, drilling and transport technologies were often described by locals and industry professionals as an inevitable, at times starkly beautiful, lucrative-if-potentially-hazardous, part of the landscape. The below images reflect a contemporary effort to think through the relationship between the oil industry, community memory, and regional ecology.
