CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Julie Cruikshank, an ethnographer and anthropologist who lived and worked for many years in the Yukon Territory, will deliver on Tuesday (Nov. 10) the inaugural lecture in a series focusing on the humanities perspectives about climate change and the changes that people are likely to experience in the coming decades.
“As we grapple with the complex and multivalent problems that are emerging and evolving from rapidly advancing global climate change, humanists will play an increasingly crucial role in helping us understand, evaluate and solve some of the most pressing issues of the 21st century,” said Dianne Harris, the director of the Illinois Program for the Research in the Humanities, which is sponsoring the series with funding from the Environmental Change Institute and the Office of Sustainability.
Each of the speakers in the five-part series will bring their understanding of the human dimensions and the projected consequences of climate change, Harris said.
“Climate change and global warming are extremely complex phenomena; the questions and problems that we face demand close attention from those of us who are best equipped to study and ask questions about the human condition,” she said. “My hope is that these lectures will serve as the catalyst for further discussions on these topics.”
Cruikshank, a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, will speak on “Melting Glaciers and Emerging Histories in America’s Far Northwest” at 7:30 p.m. on the third floor of Levis Faculty Center, 901 W. Illinois St., Urbana.
The other lectures in the series, the speakers and their topics:
Feb. 10 – “Ethics and Climate Change”; Andrew Light, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the director of the Center for Global Ethics at George Mason University.
Feb. 22 – “Melting Ice: Climate Change and the Humanities”; Carolyn Merchant, a professor of environmental history at the University of California at Berkeley.
March 9 – “Slow Violence and the Drama Deficit of Climate Change”; Robert Nixon, the Rachel Carson Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
March 16 – “The Natures of the Beast: On Honey Bees and the Biopolitics of Terror”; Jake Kosek, a professor of geography at the University of California at Berkeley.
All lectures are free and open to the public, and will be in the same location.
Additional information about the series and other events sponsored by IPRH is available on the IPRH Web site.
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