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.
For more information onCICAS (pronounced Kick Ass!), please visit their website, here.