At the End of the World Newsletter – 15 December 2023
At the End of the World Newsletter – 15 December 2023 |
Dear all, This is the fourth newsletter for the At the End of the World research program, housed at Lund University. It is the last from our first year of activity. If you’re receiving this email, it’s because you’ve been subscribed to our mailing list. Below, we’ll fill you in on some upcoming events for the spring of 2024, and also what we've been up to since the last newsletter. Table of contents: 1. Upcoming At the End of the World webinar events 1. Upcoming At the End of the World webinar events Twice per academic term, At the End of the World hosts a webinar, featuring experts in topics pertaining to our collaborative areas of study. These events are attended by our internal research team and are open to the public. In spring of 2024, we will have two webinars. Further details about the webinars will be published at the beginning of the new year. Webinar 3: Post-Apocalyptic Environmentalism For this seminar, Carl Cassegård and Håkan Thörn will discuss their recent book, titled Post-Apocalyptic Environmentalism: The Green Movement in Times of Catastrophe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). In this book, they identify three competing narratives that have evolved within the environmental movement. The first is the narrative of green progress, which has been central to the idea of sustainable development since the late 1980s. The second is an apocalyptic narrative, which became prominent in the environmental movement after the Second World War. The apocalyptic narrative expresses the fear of a threatening future, but it is a fear intermixed with a hope that ecological catastrophe can still be averted. In the last decade, a new narrative – post-apocalyptic environmentalism – has emerged. Unlike the other two narrative archetypes, post-apocalyptic environmentalism highlights the grief over loss and injustice that has been suffered in connection to ecological catastrophes, perceived as ongoing and/or unstoppable. Cassegård’s and Thörn’s work raises serious questions for those interested in the apocalyptic imagination, eco-anxiety, and environmentalism more broadly. Aaron James Goldman will serve as the chair of the session. Webinar 4 (further information to be announced) will take place on Zoom 16:00–18:00 (Stockholm time), 7 May 2024. 2. Other upcoming events of interest Lecture by Amanda Lagerkvist: "Existential AI Beyond the Apocalypse" at Sigtunastiftelsen, Sigtuna, on 20 January 2024 Lecture by Torbjörn Gustafsson Chorell: “Världens slut: apokalypsen förr och nu,” Studentföreningen Heimdal, Uppsala, on 8 February 2024 Webinar with Elżbieta Drążkiewicz: "Microdosing Conspiracy Theories," on Zoom, 26 February 2024 Lecture by Cecilia Wassén: "Jesus as an Apocalyptic Prophet and Teacher of Law" at the University of Oslo, 13 March 2024 Webinar with Lauritz Holm Petersen: "Co-constructing Future Pasts: Eschatology & History on 4chan /pol/," on Zoom, 21 March 2024 More events will be announced with the first newsletter of the new year. 3. Recent publications, podcasts, interviews, and courses featuring program team members Publications: Marie Cronqvist (with Peter Bennesved) has authored, "En humanistiskt skolad kunskapsstrateg på ett samhällsvetenskapligt fält: Torsten Husén och framväxten av ett svenskt psykologiskt försvar," in Östling, Jansson & Svensson (eds.), Humaniora i välfärdssamhället: Kunskapshistorier om efterkrigstiden (Stockholm/Göteborg: Makadam, 2023). David Dunér was editor of Lunds domkyrka: Idéer och världsbilder (Gothenburg & Stockholm: Makadam, 2023). He also co-edited a book titled Homo sapiens och andra djur: Gunnar Broberg som idé- och lärdomshistoriker, and authored a book chapter titled "Emanuel Swedenborg – Himmelska hemligheter" for the book Det esoteriska Sverige: Från Swedenborg till Strindberg (Stockholm: Stolpe, 2023). Patrik Fridlund authored "Konspirationsteorier — ett politiskt dilemma," in Nya Argus 116:8-9. Mia-Marie Hammarlin (with Lars Borin and Dimitrios Kokkinakis) published an article titled "Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy. A Mixed Methods Investigation of Matters of Life and Death," Journal of Digital Social Research 5(4): https://doi.org/10.33621/jdsr.v5i4.170 Amanda Lagerkvist published several pieces: "Reawakenings to the improbable: Offerings of the limit situation for media theory in a disorderly world," for Media, Culture & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231216440; (with Bo Reimer) “Bothering the Binaries: Unruly AI Futures of Hauntings and Hope at the Limit,” in Simon Lindgren (ed.), Handbook of Critical Studies of Artificial Intelligence (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2023); “AI as Existential Media: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021)," in Elisabeth Gräb-Schmidt, Ferdinando G. Menga, and Christian Schlenker (eds.), Rethinking Responsibility (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023); and (with J. Smolicki and M. Tudor), “Sonorous Surfaces, Biased Backends: The Gendered Voices of AI Assistants as Existential Media,” in Lisa Parks, Julia Velkova, and Sander de Ridder (eds.), Media Backends: Digital Infrastructures and Sociotechnical Relations(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2023). Johannes Stripple (with E. Chertkovskaya and J. Hasselbalch) authored "Assembling a Zero-Waste World: From situated to distributed prefiguration," Organization Studies: https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406231200726 Jayne Svenungsson authored "Skräckens eller hoppets bilder? Om synerna i Apokalypsen," Dixikon: https://www.dixikon.se/jayne-svenungsson-om-johannes-eckert-apokalypse/ Cecilia Wassén published "Amos 5:26–27 and 9:11–12 in the Damascus Document," in David Davage, Mikael Larsson, and Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer (eds.), Metaphors in the Prophetic Literature of the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, (Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements 36) (Leiden: Brill Schöningh, 2023). Podcasts and interviews: Marie Cronqvist, with Rosanna Farbøl, participated in the HØRESUND podcast, with the episode titled "Psykologiskt försvar under kalla kriget." Mia-Marrie Hammarlin was interviewed for the Social Media and Politics podcast episode #165, titled "COVID-vaccine hesitancy in Sweden." She was also interviewed in P1, Swedish Radio, "Flashback har talat: så känner internet inför covidvaccinet som fått Nobelpris," https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/nobelprisade-covid-vaccinen-vacker-kanslor. Johannes Stripple participated in a Swedish Public Radio program titled "Planned Retreat," https://urplay.se/program/232440-besserwisser-planerad-retratt. Courses: Our research program is committed to maintaining close ties between our ongoing research and our instruction of students. This commitment is reflected in university courses, which members of our research team are involved in coordinating or teaching. You can find them on the courses page of our website. 4. Congratulations to Marie Cronqvist Congratulations go out to Marie Cronqvist, a researcher and steering committee member for At the End of the World! First, for a collaborative project with Rosanna Farbøl and Emil Stjernholm titled "Varnande ljudmiljöer: ’Viktigt Meddelande till Allmänheten’ (VMA) i ett historiskt, samtida och framtida perspektiv," she received funding from Vetenskapsrådet. Second, she has been appointed for a new position as Professor of Modern History at the Department of Culture and Society (IKOS) at Linköping University. From her new post, she will continue her participation with At the End of the World. 5. Program website As a reminder, the program’s website is located at https://www.endoftheworld.lu.se/. The website will also log each of these newsletters. All the best, |