After the Human: Thinking for the Future

After the Human: Thinking for the Future 920 528 Tom Carlson

Wednesday, February 28 – Friday, March 1, 2024 The world is literally and figuratively on fire. Not since the height of the Second World War and the Cold War have…

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Addiction: Consumption and the Dilemmas of Freedom

Addiction: Consumption and the Dilemmas of Freedom 640 564 Tom Carlson

Tuesday, May 16, 2023 Robertson Gymnasium 1000A This one day conference will examine the ambiguous concept of addiction and discuss the questions that addiction’s prevalence raises about individual freedom, consumerism,…

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Energy: Ecology, Extraction, and Religion

Energy: Ecology, Extraction, and Religion 733 550 Tom Carlson

Thursday, May 4, 2023 Robertson Gymnasium 1000A A symposium on the occasion of the publication of Clayton Crockett’s Energy and Change: A New Materialist Cosmotheology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022). The…

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Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory

Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory 683 1024 Tom Carlson

Monday, June 6, 2022 at 3PM. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A This seminar with Professor Santner will focus on themes from his most recent book, Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a…

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Gnosis and the Covert Theology of Antitheology: Heidegger, Apocalypticism, and Gnosticism in Susan and Jacob Taubes

Gnosis and the Covert Theology of Antitheology: Heidegger, Apocalypticism, and Gnosticism in Susan and Jacob Taubes 864 631 Tom Carlson

Friday, June 3, 3:00PM. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A This seminar discussion will treat central themes from Professor Wolfson’s recently completed manuscript on the writing and thought of Susan Taubes, focusing specifically…

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The Fetish as a Critical Term for Religious Studies

The Fetish as a Critical Term for Religious Studies 600 450 Tom Carlson

Monday, May 16, 2022 3:00-5:00PM Robertson Gymnasium 1000A Beginning from Jacques Derrida’s definition of the fetish as a ‘bad substitute,” Hammerschlag will moderate a seminar discussion in which she argues…

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Neuromatic: Religion, Secularity, and the Techno-Scientific Today

Neuromatic: Religion, Secularity, and the Techno-Scientific Today 1024 867 Tom Carlson

Friday, May 13, 2022 Robertson Gymnasium 1000A This one day conference will take up themes and questions at play within and surrounding John Lardas Modern’s recent book Neuromatic: or, A…

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Religion<>Science: A Devolved Manifesto

Religion<>Science: A Devolved Manifesto 1024 768 Tom Carlson

Thursday, May 12, 2022 3:30 PM Robertson Gym 1000A In scientific laboratories around the world ecstatic acts of attention are taking place. And in each instance, regardless of what, exactly,…

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Stolen Time: Time and Money in Medieval and Modern Imaginaries

Stolen Time: Time and Money in Medieval and Modern Imaginaries 1024 814 Tom Carlson

Friday, April 29th, 2022 at 3PM Robertson Gymnasium 1000A The medieval Mediterranean world saw widespread agreement that usury—the practice of lending money at interest, or pricing money in terms of…

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Rosewood: Endangered species conservation and the rise of global China

Rosewood: Endangered species conservation and the rise of global China 1024 681 Tom Carlson

Thursday, December 2, 2021 at 3:30 p.m. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A Rosewood is the world’s most trafficked endangered species by value, accounting for larger outlays than ivory, rhino horn, and big…

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Make Mars Beautiful: The Aesthetics of Sino-forming in the Chinese Century

Make Mars Beautiful: The Aesthetics of Sino-forming in the Chinese Century 1024 575 Tom Carlson

Wednesday, December 1, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A  China plans to send its first manned mission to Mars by 2033, and eventually establish a permanent colony on the…

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This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom

This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom 1024 766 Tom Carlson

Thursday, March 12, 2020 at 2 p.m. Friday, March 13, 2020 at 10 a.m. Friday, March 13, 2020 at 2 p.m. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A In these three seminar sessions, we…

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Atmospheres and Affective Climate Change

Atmospheres and Affective Climate Change 1024 650 Tom Carlson

Friday, February 21, 2020 at 2 p.m. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A In recent years a growing number of thinkers from a variety of disciplines (e.g. philosophy, geography, anthropology, literary studies, cultural…

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Hooked: Art and Attachment

Hooked: Art and Attachment 991 882 Tom Carlson

Friday, February 7, 2020 at 2 p.m. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A Based on her forthcoming book of the same title, this talk makes a case for “attachment” as a key word…

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Why We Drive: Towards a Philosophy of the Open Road

Why We Drive: Towards a Philosophy of the Open Road 1024 952 Tom Carlson

Lecture: “Driving as a Humanism” Wednesday, January 29, 2020 at 4 p.m. Mosher Alumni House, Alumni Hall In the much-hailed driverless future, we’re told that human beings are to become…

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The Strange End of the Catholic-Protestant Conflict and the Genesis of Europe’s Harsh Religious Pluralism

The Strange End of the Catholic-Protestant Conflict and the Genesis of Europe’s Harsh Religious Pluralism 968 726 Tom Carlson

Monday, December 9, 2019 at 6 p.m. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A A series of recent controversies has raised many questions about Europe’s treatment of its religious minorities. Why do societies that…

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Perfection and Disaster

Perfection and Disaster 1024 768 Tom Carlson

Friday, December 6, 2019 at 2 p.m. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A In this essay I am less concerned with developing a cogent and persuasive argument than I am in posing and…

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Modalities of the Perhaps: Secularity, Post-humanism, Uncertainty

Modalities of the Perhaps: Secularity, Post-humanism, Uncertainty 1024 767 Tom Carlson

Monday, December 2, 2019 at 6 p.m. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A Even as multispecies and post-humanist scholarship expands definitions of being, it nonetheless restricts other-than-humans to entities that previously went under…

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Attending to the Lessons of the Pond: Henry David Thoreau’s “Revery”

Attending to the Lessons of the Pond: Henry David Thoreau’s “Revery” 1024 768 Tom Carlson

Thursday, November 21, 2019 at 2 p.m. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A In the forced labor camp of attention that is society today, many find that being attentive leads to distractedness, their…

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Meaning and Melancholia: Leo Tolstoy, Max Weber, William James

Meaning and Melancholia: Leo Tolstoy, Max Weber, William James 150 150 Tom Carlson

November 15, 2019 at 2 p.m. Robertson Gymnasium 1000A For a century now, Max Weber’s famous description of the genesis of the modern world as a gradual process of “disenchantment,”…

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