This panel will focus on the Oecologies research cluster and the Environmental Humanities at UBC. Part of the Un/Predictable Environments: Politics, Ecology, Agency digital conference.
Chair: Lane Hall, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Presenters:
Patricia Badir | “An Otherwise Unremarkable Oak: Shakespeare, Ecology, and Urban Development in Early Twentieth-century Vancouver”
Abstract: Near the entrance of Stanley Park, in Vancouver, British Columbia, there is an oak tree, planted by Mrs. Elizabeth Rogers in 1916 for the Shakespeare tercentenary. The narrative that unfolds around this planting illustrates how Canadian settler identity consolidates around Shakespeare’s name. However, this paper also considers the tree’s ambivalent status as a historical monument within the context of the nineteenth-century Parks Movement that developed urban green spaces for passive leisure. It shows how Rogers channeled Shakespeare to reforest the park with an ecumenical “green” spirituality that could stop time and compensate for the ravages of modern urban development.
Derek Woods | “The Trouble with Existential Risk”
Abstract: Emerging from analytic philosophy, especially the work of Nick Bostrom, the study of “existential risk” is the study of any risk that might lead to absolute human extinction, from extreme global warming to nuclear winter to malevolent AI. With my co-author Joshua Schuster, I have been studying this field in its cultural contexts. Because of its many philosophical and political blind spots, we question it in a short book entitled Three Critiques of Existential Risk.
Vin Nardizzi | “It’s Raining Potatoes!”
Abstract: This paper is about Shakespeare, potatoes, New World botanical imports, and disaster porn.
Thursday, May 20, 2021
1:00 pm – 2:10 pm PDT
Online via Zoom
Free
This conference is co-hosted by the Public Humanities Hub at UBC-Vancouver and the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast, in collaboration with the University of Allahabad. With support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council Canada.