5-6 December 2019, ANU, Canberra
“Crisis” is a recurring topic of fascination. Our era is characterized by a perpetual state of crisis: violent social unrest, natural and anthropogenic disasters, and systematic failures of the institutions that influence our individual and collective lives. Despite the growing currency of crisis, the humanities has intellectually grappled with ideas of crisis for centuries; with practices of critique and dissent, as well as seeking to understand past crises which, in retrospect, are part of a “generative” process. Now, it seems, the humanities itself is in a state of crisis. Convenors invite proposals for papers and panels that will respond in diverse and interdisciplinary ways to the idea of crisis: social, environmental, institutional, and otherwise. Convenors also invite contributions that seek to explore the idea of the “public humanities”—what is it, and how can the humanities contribute to making the world a place we want to live in, particularly in a time of crisis?
Proposals due 31 July 2019