Workshop: Greening Chronos, Growing Kairos: Turning Time in Religion and the Environmental Humanities

Co-organised by the History Faculty and the TORCH Environmental Humanities Programme

This workshop will explore the contested role that different kinds of time have played within recent conceptualizations in the environmental humanities. An opening talk delivered by Dr Devin Zuber (Associate Professor, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley) will be followed by responses from Dr Netta Cohen (Junior Research Fellow in History, Christ Church) and Oxford doctoral students Huw Jones (History, Jesus College), and Natasha Chawla (St Cross College, Theology and Religion). The responses will be moderated by Vincent Roy-Di Piazza (Linacre College, History of Science) before moving the conversation into a more open format.

A premise of the workshop is that some of these contemporary problematics around time also intersect with the fraught role of religion (and/or theology) in environmental historiographies. Selected readings will be drawn from Dipesh Chakrabarty, Michelle Bastian, Catherine Keller, among others; readings will be sent to attendees after they register to attend.

Dr Devin Zuber is Associate Professor for American Studies, Religion, and Literature at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. His most recent book, A Language of Things, was awarded the 2020 Borsch Rast Book Prize in Religious Studies, and at the GTU, he co-directs Sustainability 360, a new incubator for environmental humanities and religion. During 2021-2022, he is Visiting Professor of Religion and Literature at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Contacts: fiona.stafford@some.ox.ac.uk and elisa.cozzi@ell.ox.ac.uk

Lunch and drinks will be provided