The 2022/2023 Committee on Globalization and Social Change seminar theme is Climates.
Most immediately, our interest is environmental. We will think together about climate change and associated conceptions of nature, earth, planet, biosphere, extraction, and Anthropocene whether in relation to the current global conjuncture or other historical epochs. We are interested in work that approaches climate change and climate politics from a range of perspectives (e.g., political economic, geopolitical, anti-imperial, aesthetic, science and technology studies etc.) This may also mean using the natural climate or climate change to illuminate phenomena that appear to exist outside or apart from nature.
On another level, we are interested in work that may use “climate” as an optic or framework for social, cultural, or political analysis. On the one hand, climates are concrete, material, and situated in specific places and sets of conditions. On the other hand, they are dynamic and mobile. They do not respect territorial, administrative or cultural boundaries. A climate is structured and amorphous, an object and a medium, ubiquitous but invisible –something real that is realized through its effects on other real objects, processes, and relations. There exist both micro-climates and general climactic systems.
Third, we are interested in work that focuses on climate as something like a socio-cultural atmosphere, current, attitude, affect, style, spirit, discourse, set of norms etc. This is the colloquial sense in which people speak, for example, about economic, political, social, cultural, or aesthetic climates. Likewise, we may think about, for example, climates of fear, violence, impunity, paranoia, loss, despair, enmity, uncertainty, anticipation, longing, hope, possibility etc. Such “climates” may be pervasive or concentrated, dominant or dissident. They may be understood to be direct, explicit, identifiable forces and/or a set of implicit background conditions or media that enable, refract, condition, or channel other more explicit objects and forces.
Finally, we are interested in work that may link natural/environmental climates to climate as analytic optic and/or a socio-cultural atmosphere (e.g., the link between climate change and a particular social, political, or cultural climate).
We invite applications from mid-career CUNY faculty members (level of Associate Professor) to participate as fellows in our 2022-2023 seminar on “Climates.” The deadline for applications is March 28, 2022, at 12pm. Application information is available at globalizationandsocialchange.org/fellowships.
