The future of humanity in CICAS’s hands
The Center for Interdisciplinary Collaboration in the Arts and Sciences (CICAS) at Nipissing University invites proposals for its inaugural conference on the theme of The Future of Humanity.
In a world where, on the one hand, we are informed that the planet cannot support a human life worth living a century from now and, on the other, that the first human to live to be 1,000 years old may have already been born, no topic is more urgent for humans to debate through the lenses of their different disciplines. What is the future of the human species? What does it mean to be ‘human’? Or, as Richard Grusin suggests in The Nonhuman Turn, are we experiencing a different kind of "humanity" in the twenty-first century? Are humans mere "climatological and geological forces on the planet that operate just as nonhumans would, independent of human will, belief, or desire" as Grusin suggests? What role do humanities and sciences play in shaping our future? In what ways are disciplinary statements "events" unto themselves? If the future is in crisis, then what does it mean to 'live'? Is life "a subjective category" as Alain Badiou proposes? Scholars from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are invited to examine the future of human(ity) from an interdisciplinary perspective in this international conference at Nipissing University, July 22 - 24, 2016.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- Climate change and the future of the environment
- Migration and refugees
- Transhumanism and posthumanism, theories and applications
- Ray Kurzweil and the futurist movements
- The future of human rights
- Genetic editing and the future of the fetus
- Interdisciplinarity as the future of academia, the arts, and the sciences
- Humanity's future in space
- Utopian and dystopian Visions
- Assisted dying, assisted suicide, and the future for the elderly
- The future of capitalism
- The future of fundamentalist ideologies
- Panpsychism and speculative realism
Interested presenters should submit a 250-word abstract to Dr.Sarah Winters or Dr.Pavlina Radia by January 30, 2016.