Asian Studies Development Program National Conference

The challenges posed by the Anthropocene make harmoniously situating human environments within a larger than human world more urgent than at any other historical moment. Varying notions of natural and built, wild and human have been constructed across cultures and historical periods. Understanding the environmental impacts of these constructions and the distinctive resources they may offer for realizing more sustainable futures is a global moral imperative that will require new and deeper collaborations across the human and natural sciences.

Our conference theme of Asia and the Anthropocene: Visions of Being Human in a More-than-Human World invites reflections on the different ways human environments have been placed within larger-than-human worlds in the philosophies, literatures, arts and sciences of Asia, and explorations of how this cultural diversity can inform and inspire new visions of the biological, biocultural and biophysical connections among plants, animals, humans, and other less materially living presences.