More-than-human humanities research group!

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DUE 31 Dec. Conference CFP: “Narrating the Multispecies World. Stories in Times of Crises, Loss, Hope”

For those of you interested, consider submitting your work for this upcoming conference. Here are the details as provided by the organisers:

Narrating the Multispecies World. Stories in Times of Crises, Loss, Hope
August 3 to 5, 2023, University of Würzburg
An interdisciplinary, hybrid conference, organized by the Chair of European Ethnology


We are living in a multispecies world. Although the world is constantly changing, this change has accelerated extraordinarily in recent years, bringing forth substantial and manifold crises. Essentially caused by the capitalist pervasion of almost every part of our everyday, we are currently experiencing an increasing loss of diversity, particularly in the more-than-human world: due to changing circumstances in their original habitats, numerous living beings such as plants, insects, and mammals (including humans) migrate all over the world; some of them become extinct, and others are forced to adapt to new ecologies.

Narrating is a powerful practice. It allows us to understand what happens, and it enables us to shape the world, particularly in times of crises. Storytelling can also be seen as a practice of other-than-humans, as anthropologists Deborah Bird Rose and Thom van Dooren remind us of in their work. What are the stories of our multispecies world today? Which observations, needs, desires, dreams, nightmares, aspirations, and ethics are shared by narrating? Who is narrating which stories for whom, where, when? What is the role of the past, and which parts of our narrative heritage do we still maintain? What is the role of multispecies temporalities in narratives? What are the new powerful stories developing possibilities for a peaceful cohabitation in the multispecies world?

We are looking for critical scholarly studies and artistic projects focusing on narratives dealing with the effects of the current crises on the more-than-human world, particularly those involving more than one single species. The scope of possible topics is wide and ranges from the extinction of species, the loss of bio-diversity in the everyday lives, memories of former ecologies, historical experiences with extinction to present-day narratives about the returns of species and stories of the living together in emergent ecologies.
We will work with a broad concept of narrative culture to encompass, in addition to verbal art, diverse forms, genres, and media such as everyday narrations, films, fictional texts, multimodal artefacts, photographs, art installations, collages, inscription into landscapes etc. We invite scholars of any career level (including students) from different fields such as  

  • Ecocriticism
  • Econarratology
  • (Environmental) Humanities
  • Multispecies Studies
  • Extinction Studies
  • Cultural and Social Anthropology, European Ethnology, Visual Anthropology etc.
  • Literary Studies
  • Arts and Art History
  • History

Please send your proposal with your name and email-address until December 31, 2022 to: multispecies.conference@uni-wuerzburg.de
For more information, please visit: https://www.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de/eevk/multispecies-conference/

We can offer up to ten stipends of 500,00 Euros each to cover the cost for travel and accommodation of accepted speakers. Please inform us whether you are interested to apply for one of the grants when submitting your proposal. For those who will participate in person, we request a conference fee of 40,00 Euros for lunches and the conference dinner, and 20,00 Euros for the optional excursion, for which registration is needed.

Sculpture on a Burning Planet

Online Lecture series: Sculpture on a Burning Planet
Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki


Our planet is literally burning, and our present-day Neros are certainly fiddling. Distracted by war and egotistical power struggles, our leaders do nothing to effectively slow climate change. Energy shortages caused by the war in Ukraine lead to renewed exploitation of fossil fuel reserves. Weather systems have become more extreme and destructive – and not just in the usual “hurricane belt” – Europe, China, and Northern America have all seen extreme drought and flooding again this last year. These “once in a hundred years” phenomena are now the new normal. Exploration and mining for rare-earth elements for so-called “clean energy” puts increasing pressure on pristine wilderness and indigenous people’s lands. How do artists and the art world react to these developments? The international art world itself is driven by carbon-hungry practices, in the production, presentation, and marketing of artists and artworks. In this lecture series, four renowned experts (philosophers, artists, and researchers) present hopeful possibilities for future artistic practise in this age of environmental crisis.

Photo: Mirko Nikolić


Wednesday 21 September Elisa Aaltola: Philosophy of Love and the Nonhuman World
Wednesday 5 October Pia Lindman: Chill Survive Network
Wednesday 26 October mirko nikolić: After Extractivism in the Semi-periphery
Wednesday 16 November Maarit Mäkelä: Working with Soil

The series is presented by Professor Andy Best, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki
All lectures start at 17.00 (GMT +2) and are held online using the Zoom platform. They are free and open to all. The language of presentation is English. Please remember to use the passcode to access the meeting, and keep your mic muted unless asking a question.
Wednesday 21 September 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki)
https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/65689597891
Passcode: 422930

Elisa Aaltola: Philosophy of Love and the Nonhuman World
Discussions concerning the climate crisis often ignore nonhuman viewpoints. Yet, it is predominantly nonhuman animals, who suffer most from a warming climate, whether by undergoing agonizing deaths in forest fires, struggling due to loss of habitat or by facing species extinction. The lecture focuses on how moral love holds the potential of reminding us of other-than-human perpectives. Two philosophical definitions of love (by Plato and Iris Murdoch) will be introduced, and the role of art in evoking love toward animals will be mapped out. Can art make us fall in love with the nonhuman world?
Elisa Aaltola, PhD, works as a senior researcher and adjunct professor in philosophy at the University of Turku, Finland. Her research has focused on animal philosophy and normative moral psychology. Aaltola has published 12 books on these topics, including Esseitä eläimistä (Into 2022), Varieties of Empathy: Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield 2018) and Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (Palgrave MacMillan 2012). In 2021 she was awarded the Pro Animalia Prize for her life’s work for animals, and in 2022 she was awarded the Reformer of the Year Prize by Maailman Kuvalehti.
https://www.utu.fi/en/people/elisa-aaltola
https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisa_Aaltola
Wednesday 5 October 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki)

Pia Lindman: Chill Survive Network
https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/65300671383
Passcode: 024187
Chill Survive Network is a platform for mutual exchange and collaboration between researchers, curators, artists, and institutions in the North-beyond-the-global-North. We engage in human and nonhuman entanglements and the development of new strategies, tactics, methodology and language that speak to our present ecological crisis. The objective is to explore, learn, mediate, cope with the future transformations in the Arctic. The network consists of several physical and online meetings including seminars and workshops.
Pia Lindman as artist and researcher works with performance art, healing-as-art, installation, microbes, architecture, painting, and sculpture. In “Nose, Ears, Eyes“ (Sao Paulo Biennale, 2016) Lindman gave treatments to members of the audience and made paintings based on the visions she saw during these treatments. As Professor of Environmental Art at Aalto University from 2013 to 2018, Lindman initiated the art/science network Chill Survive focusing on the Arctic and organised the first global Radical Relevances Conference (2018). Since 2017, Lindman is doctoral candidate at the program of Nordic Cultures and Environmental Politics at Lapland University researching her concept of the subsensorial. A result of many years of investigation into the body and its place within the cultural space, Lindman’s work now moves beyond the human body proper to multiple realms of organic and inorganic life.
http://pialindman.com/
https://chillsurvive.org/
Wednesday 26 October 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki)
https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/62121956520
Passcode: 813978

mirko nikolić: After Extractivism in the Semi-periphery
As the climate and ecological crises escalate, the metal mining sector is attempting to position itself as a fundamental provider of materials for the “energy transition.” Never before seen quantities of minerals are projected to substitute fossil fuels in the quest for lower-carbon and cleaner energy, transport and infrastructure technologies. While possibly reducing the carbon footprint of material use, the effects of mining on water, air, human and more-than-human communities are less visible in the technocratic discourses and calculations.
Well documented are mining industry’s deep relations with colonialism, imperialism and related social engineering techniques of militarisation, policing, racism and sexism. Mining as part of a larger set of strategies of large- and long-term use of “natural resources” coagulates in the logics of extractivism. The concept and discussion was born in Latin America, but has since travelled across fields and geographies to tell many histories and illuminate a multitude of alternative world-making projects.
In the discussion we will explore how the evolving notions of extractivism and alternatives relate to our life, work and being.
mirko nikolić (Institute for Culture & Society, Linköping University) works through text, place-based performance and organising, often in different collaborative constellations and collectives, in solidarity with climate and environmental justice efforts. Since 2015, the principal focus of activity has been tracing the impacts of “mining booms” in North and South-East Europe, and non-extractivist alternatives from below.
https://minoritarianecologi.es/
https://www.hiap.fi/resident/mirko-nikolic/
https://liu.se/en/employee/mirni99
Wednesday 16 November 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki)
https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/62423118318
Passcode: 576714


Maarit Mäkelä: Working with Soil
Recently I spent one year in New-Zealand. Because of its volcanic nature, the place offered diverse raw materials that were suitable for ceramics making. The core of my creative practice became the natural environment and the earth samples – sand, stones, and clay – I gathered during my walks. The materials were processed further in the studio and then used as raw materials for ceramics. The lecture presents this ‘seed’ project with four interrelated projects where these practices are used in urban context. Three of the projects were conducted together with Working with soil group: first
took place in Research Pavilion #3 in the context of Venice Biennale 2019; second in Design Museum Helsinki 202
0-2021; third in Espoo Museum of Modern Art EMMA 2021-2022. All the projects discuss the entangled relationship between human and soil from different perspective. The fourth project is ongoing research with the aim of learning how to use geopolymers to work with soil matters with the result of construction that would not need firing.
Doctor of Arts Maarit Mäkelä is an Associate Professor of Practice-led Design Research at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Finland, where she is leading EMPIRICA research group and Contemporary Design master programme. Her own creative practice locates in the context of contemporary ceramics. She uses her own ceramics making as an embodied, slow practice through which to (re)consider the entangled relationship between human and non-human realms in the context of soil. Her current research interest lies in collaborative creative processes, especially how craft-based practices can be used for raising critical discourse around the stage of the environment. She has published and exhibited widely in international arenas.
https://www.maaritmakela.com/
https://empirica.aalto.fi/traces-from-the-anthropocene

Posthumanities Hub – online group meeting 1 September, 13.15 hrs-15:00 hrs

Wow, we are growing as a research group! Exciting things may be lurking ahead – and challenges for extra-ordinary academics like us. This is why we work together: to support each other and do really inventive, good quality research and edgy research training across the borders of nations, disciplines and universities. Together, apart and in various constellations with other curious research partners.

Call for our first meeting this term, dears!

A warm welcome to all you group members for our first zoom meeting this term, Thursday 1 Sep, 13:15 hrs! Group members and team on location – this is who we are whom work in the closer group. Zoom link will be sent out over email.

September 1 we launch this new fall term of 2022 with a group meeting where new postdoc researchers and visiting scholars say hello, and we meet and greet and discuss our priorities and themes for the year ahead. The Posthumanities Hub research group members commit often to the group one year at the time (with parts of their research), except of course for the PhD candidates and postdocs or more senior research staff whom have longer employment contracts – and visiting scholars who are with us for shorter periods. Together we set the living agenda for online webinars this fall, applications we do best together or for other co-written efforts of research.

Thank you for making the time and the space in your schedules and hearts for the off-road activities of The Posthumanities Hub.

PH & EBL Seminar/Webinar with Prof. Thom van Dooren, 30th May, 13:15-15:00 CEST

It is our great pleasure to welcome you all to the upcoming Posthumanities Hub and The Eco- and Bioart Lab Seminar/Webinar with Prof. Thom van Dooren (University of Sydney/University of Oslo) on “The craft of poisoning: learning not to eat cane toads

The seminar/webinar will have a hybrid format.

When: 30th May, 13:15 – 15:00 CEST

Where: Room FAROS, Tema building, Linköping University (Campus Valla) & on Zoom. For the registration link, see below.

The craft of poisoning: learning not to eat cane toads

Abstract:

Since their introduction in 1935, cane toads have been making their way across the top half of the Australian continent. As they’ve moved, they have left a wave of death in their wake, animals poisoned by the unfamiliar toxins that toad’s carry. All efforts to eradicate toads, or even slow their advance, have failed. In recent years, however, a new set of approaches to coexistence with cane toads have begun to emerge. These approaches centre on large scale efforts to teach native species not to eat toads through a ‘conditioned taste aversion’ that is produced with the use of nauseating toxins. This paper explores the history and ethics of these multispecies pedagogical experiments. It asks how the various toxic substances that are deployed by both toads and by scientists open up new possibilities for learning, for becoming differently together, for reshaping ecosystems and shared lives, while also carrying with them significant, and often mortal, dangers.

Bio:

Thom van Dooren is Deputy Director at the Sydney Environment Institute and an Associate Professor in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney, and a Professor II in the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities at the University of Oslo. His research and writing focus on some of the many philosophical, ethical, cultural, and political issues that arise in the context of species extinctions and human entanglements with threatened species and places. He is the author of Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (Columbia UP 2014), The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds (Columbia UP 2019), and A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions (MIT 2022). www.thomvandooren.org

REGISTER HERE:  https://liu-se.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5csd-6rrDoqHteMOaRhfLomKPCSZuh01xBa

EKOKRITISKA METODER

Welcome to hybrid book launch and symposium for this exciting new collection on ecocritical methodologies (in Swedish)!

I vår kommer antologin Ekokritiska metoder ut på Studentlitteratur. Alla intresserade välkomnas till en eftermiddag där antologins författare introducerar olika ekokritiska metoder med korta föreläsningar.

Alla som är på plats i Göteborg är därefter välkomna på releasefest i LIR:s personalrum, plan 6, Humanistiska fakulteten Göteborgs universitet.

Anmälan till camilla.brudin.borg@lir.gu.se

Program – Hybridevent

Lokal: J330 på Humanistiska fakulteten, GU

https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/66837509706?pwd=QnpycVFwaTdZeEkvejlaT2t2SmRWZz09

13.15-13.30

Redaktörerna hälsar välkomna (Camilla Brudin Borg, Jørgen Bruhn, Rikard Wingård)

13.30 Ekokritisk rumsanalys (Camilla Brudin Borg, GU)

13.45 Empirisk ekokritik (W.P. Małecki, Wroklaw Univ. & Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Yale Univ. på engelska)

14.00 Att zooma ut (Björn Billing, GU)         

14.15 Ekonarratologi och metaforanalys (Johanna Lindbo, GU)                                               

Fikapaus 14.30-15.00

15.00 Zoopoetiska och metonymiska läsarter (Amelie Björck, SH)            

15.15 Maktkritik och antropocentriska läckage (Ann-Sofie Lönngren, SH)

15.30 Medforskande ekokritiska litteratursamtal (Martin Hellström, LnU)
15.45 Att läsa naturlyrik utan Naturen (Erik van Ooijen, KAU)                                                   

Kort paus 16-16.15

16.15 Intermedial ekokritik (Jørgen Bruhn & Niklas Salmose, LnU)

16.30 En ekokritik för framtiden går från mening till handling (Cecilia Åsberg, LiU)

16.45 Holistisk metod som ekokritiskt mål (Rikard Wingård, GU)
Avslutningsord

Välkommen på mingelfest från 17.00 i LIR:s personalrum plan 6

I vår kommer antologin Ekokritiska metoder ut på Studentlitteratur. Alla intresserade välkomnas till en eftermiddag där antologins författare introducerar olika ekokritiska metoder med korta föreläsningar.

Alla som är på plats i Göteborg är därefter välkomna på releasefest i LIR:s personalrum, plan 6, Humanistiska fakulteten Göteborgs universitet.

Anmälan senast den 22 april till camilla.brudin.borg@lir.gu.se

Program – Hybridevent

Lokal: J330 på Humanistiska fakulteten, GU

https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/66837509706?pwd=QnpycVFwaTdZeEkvejlaT2t2SmRWZz09

13.15-13.30

Redaktörerna hälsar välkomna (Camilla Brudin Borg, Jørgen Bruhn, Rikard Wingård)

13.30 Ekokritisk rumsanalys (Camilla Brudin Borg, GU)

13.45 Empirisk ekokritik (W.P. Małecki, Wroklaw Univ. & Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Yale Univ. på engelska)

14.00 Att zooma ut (Björn Billing, GU)         

14.15 Ekonarratologi och metaforanalys (Johanna Lindbo, GU)                                               

Fikapaus 14.30-15.00

15.00 Zoopoetiska och metonymiska läsarter (Amelie Björck, SH)            

15.15 Maktkritik och antropocentriska läckage (Ann-Sofie Lönngren, SH)

15.30 Medforskande ekokritiska litteratursamtal (Martin Hellström, LnU)
15.45 Att läsa naturlyrik utan Naturen (Erik van Ooijen, KAU)                                                   

Kort paus 16-16.15

16.15 Intermedial ekokritik (Jørgen Bruhn & Niklas Salmose, LnU)

16.30 En ekokritik för framtiden går från mening till handling (Cecilia Åsberg, LiU)

16.45 Holistisk metod som ekokritiskt mål (Rikard Wingård, GU)
Avslutningsord

Välkommen på mingelfest från 17.00 i LIR:s personalrum plan 6

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