The Richardson American Studies Lecture Series
Since 1987, the Richardson American Studies Lecture Series has been a fixture of intellectual life at Georgetown, with scholars, journalists, politicians, and public figures reflecting on their work in the fields of U.S. history, politics, and culture. The lecture is the highlight of the American Studies calendar and one of the most treasured lecture events hosted at Georgetown.
The Richardson American Studies Lecture Series was created through the generous gift of Mrs. Eudora Richardson C’84.
Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, Dr. Thea Riofrancos (Providence College)
Wednesday, April 8, 4:30-6:00pm, Mortara Center for International Studies (and on Zoom)
Thea Riofrancos is an associate professor of political science at Providence College, a strategic co-director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left. She is the author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) and Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), and the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). Her publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Global Environmental Politics, World Politics, and Perspectives on Politics, as well as in media outlets including The New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, n+1, Dissent, and more.
In this year’s lecture, “Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism,” Thea Riofrancos explores whether “green capitalism” will save us from the climate crisis. Clean technologies and renewable energy are certainly growing sites of capitalist investment, with government policies playing a key role in making these sectors profitable. But the supply chains that produce the technologies pose vexing dilemmas for the energy transition. These dilemmas are most dramatic at the extractive frontiers of green capitalism: where the natural resources needed to manufacture electric vehicles and build windmills are extracted. In this talk, we will unpack these challenges through the lens of lithium, a so-called “critical mineral” essential for its role in decarbonizing one of the most polluting sectors: transportation.