Please join us in congratulating COSAS member and Assistant Professor of Environmental History and the College, Elizabeth (Liz) Chatterjee, who was recently awarded the 2025 Jack Goody Award for her article “Towards an Energetic of Class: Comparing Energy Protests in India and the United States”. Awarded by the Comparative Studies in Society and History (CSSH) at the University of Michigan, the Jack Goody Award honors Sir Jack Goody, a frequent author and contributor to the journal. This year’s panel of judges – comprised of Matei Candea, Nandini Chatterjee, and Judith Scheele – praised Chatterjee for her article’s “impressive combination of elegant writing, deep commitment to comparison and clear wider relevance,” terming it a “tour de force.”

In her article, Chatterjee writes about how people contest the uses of energy, a problem central to any transformative understanding of climate change. She weaves energy usage and class formation together, showing how they support each other and create complex, historically deep structures of economy and law that contain massive reserves of social identity, capital, and political influence. Chatterjee does this by comparing irrigation farming in India and interstate trucking in the United States. Please find her conversation with the CSSH for more.

Congratulations, Professor Chatterjee, on this achievement!