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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