Fourth Annual CHR Symposium: humanity and its others (April 24-25, 2025)

Keynote speaker: Jeffrey J. Cohen

April 24, 2025, 4:00 PM to April 25, 2025, 4:00 PM EDT

This year’s symposium will feature a keynote address, "Monsters at the Limit," by Jeffrey J. Cohen, Dean of Humanities and Foundation Professor of English at Arizona State University and former co-president of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, on Thursday, April 24, 2025 (4:00-5:30 pm), and a full day of panels on Friday, April 25, 2025.

 

CHR Director Alok Yadav and CHSS Dean Ann Ardis will open the event at 4 pm on April 24.

 

Thank you to our symposium co-sponsors- Cultural Studies, English, Modern and Classical Languages, Philosophy

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Advance registration required for both- please RSVP here

Program available here

Thursday's keynote address will be a HYBRID event- please join us in Merten 1204 or on zoom.

Friday's day of panels will be fully IN PERSON in Merten 1202.

Jeffrey J. Cohen is the Dean of Humanities in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Foundation Professor of English. 

His research examines strange and beautiful things that challenge the imagination, phenomena that seem alien and intimate at once. He is especially interested in what monsters, misfits, inhuman forces, things that won't stay put reveal about the cultures that dream, fear and desire them. He is widely published in the fields of medieval studies, monster theory, and environmental humanities. His book, Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman, received the 2017 René Wellek Prize for best book in comparative literature from the American Comparative Literature Association. With planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton he co-wrote the book “Earth,” an interdisciplinary examination of planetary thinking. With Julian Yates, he wrote Noah's Arkive (2023), a book about imagining conservation and humane refuge during climate change.

Panel Schedule