Events

FHI Working Group: "Ecology and the Humanities"

First Meeting
November 12, 6-8 PM
Franklin Humanities Center 240, Duke University Central Campus

The editors of Polygraph 22 ("Ecology and Ideology") will be convening a year-long working group entitled "Ecology and the Humanities," co-convened with Priscilla Wald (English) and sponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute.

We are interested in mapping the multi-directional flows between ecological science and the humanities; in particular, we plan to investigate how the humanities extracts and applies ecological metaphors, and to what effects, as well as how modes of critical inquiry developed in the humanities can translate into tools of critique for the ecological sciences. Can post-structuralism assist ecological thought and practice? How can the philosophical/discursive reconfiguration of existing theories of nature and culture inform ecological action? Does the tension between anthropocentric and ecocentric approaches to political and cultural inquiry reflect similar divisions between the humanities and sciences regarding the study of ecology?

The group will meet twice this semester and continue into the spring. We happily invite participation from undergraduates and graduate students from all disciplines, as well as interested faculty.

We hope you will be able to attend our first meeting on November 12, which we hope will help contextualize the history of ecological science against the use of ecology in politics and the humanities through several chapters from Joachim Radkau's Nature and Power and Dana Philips's The Truth of Ecology. We will also discuss a tentative plan for the rest of the year, which will include a December meeting on ecological metaphors in the humanities, a January conversation with visiting science-fiction author and Polygraph contributor Kim Stanley Robinson, and an early-spring-semester discussion of the work of Jared Diamond. We invite suggested readings or topics, and our budget includes limited funds to support visiting speakers from other institutions.

Please email Gerry Canavan (gerryblog@gmail.com) for the Nov. 12 readings.

Franklin Humanities Institute: http://www.fhi.duke.edu/