Another Sense of Earth at the End of Worlds: Environmental Humanities in the Face of Crises

Another Sense of Earth at the End of Worlds: Environmental Humanities in the Face of Crises
The Fourth Philosophy and Religion Graduate Student Conference 
at the University of North Texas (UNT) 

In a time of crises overshadowed by impressions of the precarity and contingency of the plurality of worlds we live in, we invite interdisciplinary, critical reflection on the meaning and stakes of our senses of world and ending. While totalizing narratives of crises oscillate between techno-optimistic visions of geoengineering and dystopic pessimism, this conference seeks to contextualize dominant understandings of endings to envision new conceptions of time, relations, and finality beyond the hegemonic imaginaries.
For whom and what do the apocalyptic bells of the end of the world sound? What does it even mean to conceive of “our” world as ending? Who’s included and excluded from this sense of world? What does it mean for traditions in which the end of the world is inevitable, cyclical, or has already come to pass? What would this so-called “end of the world” even mean for people who’ve already endured innumerable ends to their ways of life?

Taking up the gauntlet thrown by Thomas Nail in Theory of the Earth, we ask for submissions that problematize static, dominant conceptions of world and think with him on what it means, in the context of crises, to imagine how “this stable ground is becoming increasingly unstable—for some of us more than others.” In this spirit, the conference seeks to engage with forms of thought that emphasize the radically plural character of sense-making, ways of knowing, and temporal existence. We welcome submissions that build upon these critical and marginalized perspectives to challenge assumptions of crisis and delimit what worlds are at stake. Within these broad thematic horizons, we aim to bring together a diverse set of perspectives into dialogue and reconceptualize our relationship to planet Earth. 

We cordially invite graduate students from all fields and disciplines to submit their research and perspectives on the following themes:

• Indigenous & non-Western conceptions of world-making, cataclysm, and/or time

• Feminist/Queer theories on resistant subjectivities and spaces in the face of precarity

• Geophilosophical approaches from traditions historically excluded from philosophy (ex. Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) 

• Philosophies of science and normative theories that utilize a planetary approach 

• Relational ontologies, specifically those with nonhuman and more-than-human beings

• Phenomenological accounts of temporality, “world collapse,” and futurity

• Critical theories on the “Anthropocene” and the role of capitalism in the ongoing environmental crisis

• Ecocritical perspectives on the role of technology and natural science in organizing our sense of the Earth

Conference Details

The conference will be held in-person at the University of North Texas, Denton, TX, from November 13th-15th. This conference does not require registration fees.  The conference will feature Thomas Nail, a Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver, as the keynote speaker, whose materialist interventions in conceptions of earth and planet, particularly in Theory of the Earth, pose deep and transformational reflections on imaginaries of time, space, and world for our context of apocalypse and crisis.