The Anthropocene: from boundaries to bonds. Interdisciplinary crossovers in knowledge development

In particular, we invite crossing disciplinary boundaries. While expert knowledge remains at the core of examining the Anthropocene, its resultant commitment to devise guidance for policy makers and to develop social aware- ness based on verified knowledge requires involvement from other fields of expertise. Scholarship tackling the Anthropocene spans, apart from earth sciences, social science, the humanities, human geography, and other disciplines. By bringing together scholars from many areas of research inquiry, the seminar aims at exploring the possibility of inter- and multidisciplinary scholarly work on developing accountable knowledge that needs to be subsequently translated into social and cultural narratives. How do we cooperate across the boundaries within academia, in politics and social organizations, as we strive to address the Anthropocene?

That the Anthropocene poses an unprecedented challenge urging political action at global and local levels has been already evidenced by activists, NGOs, political groups and researchers across the world. Governance models so far have been involved in the crucial conflict between the harshness of data forecasting catastrophic scenarios and the fear to decrease consumption and extraction of resources. How do we create new ways of relating (intra- and interspecies) and turn the shattering experience of boundary-crossing into active bond-making through science, politics and various forms of activism?

We want to explore what narratives are being developed to provide viable solutions at the level of politics and governance, including institutions for educating society and expanding the civic sense of responsibility and new planetary awareness. What new lexicons are being developed to accommodate the cognitive, ethical and onto- logical challenges of the planet in crisis? What new forms of thinking, doing and telling do we need to create a new semiotics of crisis, catastrophe, accountability, agency, and hope that cannot be contained within the known paradigm of human mastery over of the earth? How do we confront the limits of our understanding and devise new ways of sense-making in light of (rather than despite) the Anthropocene? How to promote knowledge based on the idea of reciprocity?

The topics and questions below, by no means exhausting the range of concerns, encourage an inter- and multi- disciplinary reflection on the Anthropocene. We invite individual presentations, thematic panels and roundtables on the following:

• The geopolitics of modernization: capitalist (Capitalocene) and socialist (communist) models; extractivism and coloniality
• Cartographies of Anthropocene-generated displacements
• Anthropocene(s) in critical thought, arts and cultural narratives: apocalyptic narratives; ecomodernism and narratives of hope; the role of art in imagining better futures; the Anthropocene art
• Social temporalities (political, cultural, etc.) and planetary (geological) temporalities
• Programs promoting climate care: forms of intervention, the appealing value, viability of plans, translationality/transferrability of premises
• Local struggles and resilience: decarbonization, transition to renewable energy, grassroots and cross-border practices of sustainability and restoration
• Anthropocene pedagogies: how and what to teach about the Anthropocene to various social and age groups?
• Affective Anthropocene: anxiety, grief, mourning, denial, hope
• Indigenous knowledges as models for sustainability and environmental justice struggles Planetarity of ecological imagination and thought vs. globalism of consumer markets
• New ontologies: ecological catastrophe as an example of “hyperobjects”; materials and their processes; interdependencies of life and non-life; non-human (more-than-human) agencies and the possibilities of new relationality for the human, the non-human and more-than-human

Important information:

• There is no conference fee.
• The Organizers may offer a small travel refund to a limited number of PhD students and emerging scholars.
• The conference will take place at the University of Wrocław, the venue tba. Wrocław is a beautiful city in south-west Poland.

• Deadline for abstract proposals (20 min individual papers; 60 min panels; 45 min roundtables): 31 May 2023. Please send abstract/panel proposals with a short bio-note to: anthropoceneconf@gmail.com
• Conference website: https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Acad_Main/Events/The%20Anthropocene%20from%20boundaries%20to%20bonds

More information about the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/927973268212165?ref=newsfeed

Keynote speakers:

Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago

Professor Orit Halpern, TU Dresden

Professor Seán Hand, University of Warwick

Professor Jeremy David Bendik-Keymer, Case Western Reserve University

Professor Peter Kraftl, University of Birmingham

Professor Valerio Lucarini, University of Reading, MAE

Professor Juan Carlos Cruz Suárez, Stockholm University

Professor Mark Williams, University of Leicester

Professor em. Jan Zalasiewicz, University of Leicester

Scientific Board:

Professor em. dr. Lars Walløe, University of Oslo, MAE

Professor Göran Bolin, Södertörn University, MAE

Professor dr. hab. Ewa Domańska, Adam Mickiewicz University

Professor dr. Orit Halpern, TU Dresden

Professor Mark Jackson, Bristol University

Professor dr. hab. Leszek Koczanowicz, SWPS

Professor dr. Mirja Lecke, University of Regensburg

Professor Valerio Lucarini, University of Reading, MAE

Dr. inż. Marta Rusnak, WUST, Academia Iuvenum

Dr. hab. Marta Tomczok, Prof. University of Silesia

Prof. Juan Carlos Cruz Suárez, University of Stockholm

Prof. Mark Williams, Leicester University

Dr. Benjamin Dew, Coventry University

Olga Tokarczuk Ex-Centre: dr. hab. Dorota Kołodziejczyk, MAE; dr. Urszula Lisowska; dr. hab. Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice; dr. hab. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Prof. UWr; dr. hab. Helena Duffy, Prof. UWr; dr. hab. Katarzyna Majbroda, Prof. UWr

Organizing Committee:

Olga Tokarczuk Ex-Centre. Academic Research Centre, Faculty of Letters, University of Wrocław:

• Ewelina Adamik
• dr. hab. Wojciech Browarny
• prof. UWr, dr. Joanna Banachowicz
• dr. hab. Justyna Deszcz, Prof. UWr
• dr. hab. Agnieszka Helena Duffy, prof. UWr
• dr. Urszula Lisowska
• dr. Małgorzata Kolankowska
• dr hab. Dorota Kołodziejczyk
• Katarzyna Koza
• Anna Maciejewska
• prof. dr. hab. Katarzyna Majbroda, Prof. UWr
• dr. hab. Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice

Academia Europaea Wrocław Knowledge Hub:

• Anna Jarosz
• Katarzyna Majkowska