Institute on Critical Climate Change
A humanities-based institute for exploring the philosophical and cultural dimension of "climate change"
Institute on Critical Climate Change
The Institute on Critical Climate Change (IC3) advances an inter-disciplinary dialog on the critical and conceptual implications of the ‘climate change’ era. Through conferences and publications, IC3 promotes exploration of conceptual configurations beyond 20th century definitions of the political, difference, and ‘life.’ IC3 proceeds with the assumption that a mutation of terrestrial systems implies corresponding changes in epistemologies, conceptual tools, reference systems, reading models—that is ‘critical climate change.’
IC3 focuses on advancing the ‘critical climate change’ dialog, while traversing three sets of borders:
- the borders between 20th century models with their anthropocentric bias and 21st century horizons
- the borders between humanistic, media, and philosophic discourse and the sciences
- the borders which separates diverse planetary regions, languages, and linguistic histories
In addition to a series of conferences exploring the preliminary ground of these coming discourses, IC3 is generating a series of intra-regional and global symposia (China, Trinidad, Vietnam, Turkey the U.K., South Korea, etc), anticipating the emergence of new discursive networks.
IC3 is a SUNY-based initiative based at the University at Albany.
Initiatives
The Institute on Critical Climate Change (IC3) has pursued a number of projects across varying disciplines since its inaugural event at the University at Albany, Chronopolitics and Visual Culture, in April of 2007. Ecologies of War, also held at the University at Albany, followed in November of 2007.
IC3 has scheduled a number of events in coming months (detailed descriptions can be found using the menu above). April 4-6th, 2008, IC3 will host X-Factors: Terrestriality, Reinscription, Memory Regimes- A Workshop in ‘Climate Change’ and the Archive, at the University at Albany, State University of New York. A retreat-symposium, Other Materialities: A Sino-American Dialog on Representation and Politics in the Era of Planetary ‘Climate Change’, will follow in Sichuan, China (June 7-13, 2008), and the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, will host Idioms of the Post Global Order on March 19-21, 2009.
In addition to the above slated events, IC3 is in the development phase on a symposium in Trinidad, hosted by the University of the West Indies, provisionally entitled Poverty and Future Regionalism (February 2009), a symposium in Hanoi, Vietnam, and A SUNY-wide Humanities-Science Colloquium. The Institute is also planning a Summer Institute at the University at Albany, and an Anglo-Asian Colloquia Network engaging China, India, South Korea, Malaysia, and Turkey in the ‘Climate Change’ dialog.
Prospective publications include Mutations: An Atlas to Critical Climate Change (Fordham University Press), the Eco-Wars Collection to be featured in the e-journal The Global South, and edited volumes resulting from upcoming conferences and symposia.
The Institute on Critical Climate Change is hosted by the Department of English, University at Albany, State University of New York, in collaboration with The Humanities Institute at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
Directors
Tom Cohen
IC3, Co-Founder & Director
Professor, Department of English
University at Albany, SUNY
Henry Sussman
IC3, Co-Founder & Director
Professor, Department of Comparative Literature
University at Buffalo, SUNY
Visiting Professor, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Yale University
Mary Valentis
IC3, Creative Director
Associate Professor, Department of English
University at Albany, SUNY
518-442-4082 (office)
518-436-3806 (fax)
Project Committee
Thomas Bass
Professor, English Department and Journalism Program, University at Albany, State University of New York
Kevin Bell
Professor, English Department, University at Albany,
State University of New York
Glyne Griffiths
Chair, Latin and Caribbean Studies Department,
University at Albany, State University of New York
Mike Hill
Chair, English Department, University at Albany, State
University of New York
Advisory Board
Eduardo Cadava
Professor, Department of English, Princeton University
Claire Colebrook
Professor, Department of English Literature, Edinburgh University
Werner Hamacher
Chair, Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Johannes Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main
Wang Fengzhen
Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing
Carol Jacobs
Birgit Baxter Chair, Departments of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, Yale University
J. Hillis Miller
Professor Emeritus, Comparative Literature & English, University of California, Irvine
Akira Mizuta Lippit
Professor of Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Cultures and Cinema-Television, University of Southern California
Alberto Moreiras
Professor of Romance Languages and Studies, University of Aberdeen
Avital Ronell
Professor, Departments of German and Comparative Literature, NYU
Haun Saussy
Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Yale University
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Avalon Professor of the Humanities, Departments of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Barbara Herrnstein Smith
Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English; Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory, Duke University; Distinguished Professor of English, Brown University
Bernard Stiegler
Director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris
Samuel Weber
Avalon Professor of Humanities, Departments of German and Comparative Literature, Northwestern University
Events Calendar
Idioms of the Post Global-Order (pdf.)
March 19-21, 2009. University at Buffalo.
Sponsored by the Humanities Institute at the University of Buffalo
Other Materialities: A Sino-American dialog on representations and politics in the era of planetary climate change
June 7-13, 2008. Sichuan, China.
A retreat symposium addressing the horizon of cultural translation between China and America in the dawning era of climate change.
X-Factors: Terrestriality, Reinscription, and Memory Regimes
April 4-6, 2008. University at Albany.
A workshop on 'climate change' and the archive.
Ecologies of War: Life technologies and planetary conflict
November 8-9, 2007. University at Albany
Chronopolitics and Visual Culture: Temporal politics of the image and architectural spaces
March 23-24, 2007. University at Albany.
Publications
Coming soon.
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