Sarah泭Stanford-McIntyre, PhD
- HERBST PROGRAM FOR ENGINEERING, ETHICS, AND SOCIETY
Dr. Sarah Stanford-McIntyre is an assistant professor and energy historian in the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics, and Society at the 勒貊勛圖. Her latest book, out in December of 2026 with the Columbia University Press History of Capitalism series, is titled Natural Risk: A History of Oil, Politics, and the Environment in West Texas. The book explores how oil industry employees responded to the industry's intertwined economic and environmental risks, arguing that industry acceptance of some risks and not others impacted Texass politics and policy in the twentieth century.泭
She has also published articles on the technological, public health, and labor history of energy throughout the United States as well as an edited volume on energy and American film. She is currently working on a book project on electrification in the Mountain West and another edited volume on the global history of emerging renewable energy capitals.泭
Broadly, her research conceptualizes how energy systems (fossil fuels, electricity, wind, water power, etc) shape and are shaped by social, political, and economic factors. While much of her work nominally focuses on the US, the integrated nature of energy production, distribution, and consumption systems are fundamentally global. Further, the problems caused by energy scarcity and energy production through extraction are best understood within comparative, global frameworks. Case in point, her teaching focuses on climate change and energy in society on a global scale.
She is affiliated faculty with the Center of the American West, 泭the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, and the CU Department of History. 泭
Research Interests:泭
- Energy history
- History of science and technology
- Environmental history
- Social and cultural history
- Labor, capitalism, and industrialization
Select Publications:泭
Books
- Natural Risk:泭Oil, Politics, and the Remaking of West Texas, Columbia University Press, 2026.
- American Energy Cinema, Robert Lifset, Raechel Lutz, and Sarah Stanford-McIntyre, West Virginia University Press, April泭2023. **authors listed alphabetically**
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles泭
- River Power: The Lower Colorado River Authority and the Construction of a Texas Energy Economy, Environmental History, accepted.
- Predictive Numbers: Labor, Data, and Power in the U.S. Oil Industry, Technology and Culture泭67:2 (April, 2026).
- Desk and Derrick: How the Womens Petroleum Industry Club Helped Envision Oils Technocratic Future, Labor: Studies in Working Class History, 19:4, (December 01, 2022): 6-26.
- The Saudi Arabia of Wind: Deregulation and the Rise of Wind Power in Texas, Journal of Energy History, 7:15, Dec 2021.