Environmental Emergencies, Emergent Environments

Inaugural Conference, Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU), The University of Chicago

April 20–21, 2023 | Room 122, Regenstein Library

Full details: cegu.uchicago.edu/events/conference-2023

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The climate crisis unfolds through a series of environmental emergencies at once abrupt and long-churning. These emergencies are deeply interwoven and yet, at the same time, engender unique and emergent environments of disaster, struggle, and social reinvention. How might we understand the roots of these transformations while attending to the particular environments where emergency erupts? How, in other words, might we think environmental emergencies and emergent environments together?

CEGU’s inaugural conference brings together scholars from across the social sciences and humanities—including agrarian studies, digital humanities, ecology, environmental history, geography, literature, planning, and urban sociology—to dialogue and debate about these issues, their historical genealogies, and future implications. The conference opens with the inaugural Calvin and Freda Redekop Lectures in Environment and Society and will feature panels on agrarian environments, spatial media, urbanization, and waste with leading scholars in conversation with CEGU faculty.

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Calvin and Freda Redekop Lectures in Environment and Society, with Farhana Sultana and Holly Jean Buck

Panels featuring Max Ajl, Hillary Angelo, Helen Anne Curry, Billy Fleming, Vinay Gidwani, Pauline Goul, Jo Guldi, Ihnji Jon, Josh Lepawsky, Shannon Mattern, Ivette Perfecto, and Xiaowei R. Wang

Moderated by CEGU faculty Alexander Arroyo, Grga Bašić, Neil Brenner, Elizabeth Chatterjee, Gary Herrigel, Catherine Kearns, and Sabina Shaikh

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Based in the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU) is an interdisciplinary platform for critical thinking, advanced research, and innovative pedagogy on the societal and spatial dimensions of climate change, biodiversity loss, and other kinds of environmental transformation.

Key fields of research and pedagogy include urban environmental studies and sustainable urbanism; energy histories and geographies; environmental humanities; spatial and environmental media; environmental policy, design and practice; and community engagement.

Further event listings can be found at cegu.uchicago.edu/events.