May 24,2023 9:00-10:30 May 31,2023 9:00-11:30

What Facts Are and Why They Matter

Misinformation, falsehoods, and “fake news” tend to spread very quickly on the internet and in the news. People tweet, like, and share stories, reports, and explanations without verifying whether the source contains accurate or correct information. Because of the high speed at which information propagates on the internet, misleading narratives multiply far and wide across the globe with a single click. We have little time to consider what facts are or why facts matter. In this lecture series, Ulatowski will address the nature and value of facts. On one hand, he will argue for a pluralistic account of facts: while facts are realised differently by different domains of enquiry because of the role that they play in that particular domain, they all must answer to one concept of fact. On the other hand, he will show why facts matter not so much because they are vehicles of accurate information but because they align with our view that beliefs should be normatively constrained to serve as salient sources of information.

April 28, 2023 15:00-16:30 and 5 May, 2023; 15:00-17:30

“Ocean and Air as Media Environments"

The first lecture will trace how the sea has been a site for technical innovation and reflection and the second, how the air has, especially with reference to weather.

17 November 2022: 16:00-17:30 15 December 2022: 16:30-18:45

Shifts, turns and returns in the contemporary humanities (lecture, Thursday, 17 November 2022, 16:00-17:30, 2 h, online)

The ideas presented in my talk article do not concern the dominant trends in the humanities but are instead based on the work of those scholars who propose alternative, cutting-edge research perspectives such as Jane Bennett, Rosi Braidotti, Edoardo Viveiros de Castro, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Donna Haraway, Tim Ingold, Bruno Latour, Walter Mignolo, Anna Tsing, among others. I reflect on how the interpretative frameworks of the avant-garde trends in the humanities and social sciences which lead the way in heated debates, have shifted markedly in recent years. Since the late 1990s the humanities and social sciences have been going through major changes caused by declining poststructuralist influence and the end of postmodernism, symbolically marked by 9/11. It results in the emergence of a field of multidisciplinary knowledge that might be termed non- or post-anthropocentric and non- or post-Western humanities. It tries to describe, comprehend and ‘digest’ problems generated by global capitalism, migration, the ecological crisis, climate change, natural disasters, mass killings, terrorism and technological progress

Sustainable Epistemology (research seminar, Thursday, 24 November 2022, 16:30-18:45, 3 h, online)

Naomi Scheman (University of Minnesota), a philosopher and a specialist in the ethics and politics of epistemology, in 2012 published an article „Toward a Sustainable Epistemology.” By sustainability, Scheman means “norms that underwrite practices of inquiry that make it more rather than less likely that others, especially those (whoever they may be) who are marginalized or subordinated (however that might be), will be able to acquire knowledge in the future” (473). For the author sustainable epistemology has to do with social in/justice (Miranda Flicker’s “Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing”, 2007). The purpose of the seminar will be to discuss the ideas presented in Scheman’s article. Participants are asked to prepare statements on how the notion of "sustainable epistemology" can be understood and developed if we apply a different understanding of "sustainability," include non-human entities in the problem of knowledge building, and locate a project of “sustainable epistemology” in different interpretative frameworks, such as animal studies, indigenous studies, sound studies, and other new trends in the humanities and social sciences, as discussed in the lecture on "Shifts, turns and returns in the contemporary humanities." Participants are asked to work on a definition of sustainable epistemology that are built on their research and would support arguments presented in their PhD thesis.

Required readings:

• Naomi Scheman, Toward a Sustainable Epistemology. Social Epistemology, vol. 26, no. 3-4 (October 2012): 471-489.
• Naomi Scheman, Empowering Canaries: Sustainability, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Epistemology. International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, vol. 7, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 169-191.

Ewa Domańska – Full Professor of Human Sciences at the Faculty of History, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań; a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences; since 2002 a recurring visiting professor in the Anthropology Department/Archaeology Center/DLCL of Stanford University. Her teaching and research interests include history and the theory of historiography, comparative theory of the humanities and social sciences as well as the environmental humanities, ecocide and genocide studies. Domańska’s recent publications include: “Unbinding from Humanity: Nandipha Mntambo’s Europa and the Limits of History and Identity” (Journal of the Philosophy of History, vol. 14, 2020: 310–336); “The Environmental History of Mass Graves” (Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 22, no. 2, 2020: 241-255), „Prefigurative Humanities” (History and Theory, vol. 60, no. 4, December 2021: 141-158) and edited with Alexandra Staniewska Political Exhumations: Theory and Practice (2022, in Polish, in print). Email: ewa.domanska@amu.edu.pl

29 November 2022: 14:30-16:00; 06 December 2022: 14:30-16:45

“Religion and ideology: the role of religion in political systems. The case of Buddhism.”

The lectures first discuss a most adequate criteria to define religion, and second, deliberate the role of religion in various cultural and political systems as well as a range of theoretical and practical implications of political systems with embedded religious doctrines. An additional perspective will be provided by the case of Buddhism, which has served a political ideology since its beginnings till modern times.

A relevant publication by the author:

“Logic in religious and non-religious belief systems”, 2017: https://bit.ly/3L4nHnb

Piotr Balcerowicz is a professor at the University of Warsaw / Faculty of Oriental Studies, a former professor at the University of Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) / Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie. More information on the guest lecturer can be found here: http://balcerowicz.eu/

04 January 2023: 14:30-16:00; 11 January 2023: 14:30-17:00

“Rome, Judaea, and the Jews: A Singular, Religious Conflict?”

Abstract: Arguably the most consequential conflict of the ancient West was the Judaean War of 66–70 / 74 CE. The destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 CE was devastating for Jews, a gift for the new Flavian regime in Rome, and a foundation of Christian self-definition. Most accounts of that momentous conflict unite three propositions: that it was an intense existential national struggle on the Judaean side, lasting eight or nine years (to the fall of 73/74 CE); that such an intense conflict was the explosion of Roman-Judaean tensions building for six to twelve decades; and that the conflict was so lethal because of its uniquely religious nature. These common views are understandable if one reasons from consequences to causes: such a huge catastrophe must have had powerful motives. Historians in the humanities tradition, however, investigate events in order to understand how they looked as they were unfolding, the meanings attached to them by participants. This pair of lectures attempts a preliminary sketch of such an approach. In the first session we consider the general situation of Jews (or Judaeans) in Judaea and elsewhere under Roman rule, inspecting the nature of provincial governance and of Rome’s presence in Judaea, Jerusalem’s relationships with its neighbours over the 130 years between Rome’s arrival and the war, and the problematic category of ‘religion’. The second session zeros in on an early phase of the war, in Galilee, to illustrate the process of historical analysis for the whole war. Ancient Rome and Judaea, though far from the special interests of most humanists, offer excellent material for reflection on the general methods of the humanities and the categories we bring to our investigations.

19 January 2023: 14:30-16:00; 26 January 2023: 14:30- 17:00

1.“The Ethnicization and the Deterritorialization of Genocide. An Inquiry into the Shoah Discourse, Victims and Victimhood”

2.“The ‘mythological machine’ of antisemitism: the recycling of false accusations against Jews in the age of mechanical reproduction”

15 March 2023: 14:30-16:00; 22 March 2023: 14:30-17:00

1st one: Media Studies as Interdisciplinary Humanities

This lecture addresses media studies and media theory not as one specific discipline but more like a broader take on humanities in the context of technological culture. Following on earlier cues by Friedrich Kittler and many others, I am interested in investigating what are the concepts and takes that seem to relate to “media” but are contextualized outside the usual topics of media studies too. Some areas of work are more closely aligned to this sort of investigation, such as architecture, science and technology studies, or for example visual culture studies, but the challenge to think about technology is anyway much broader. Some key concepts and examples will be discussed as well as some examples from the broader reach of humanities scholarship, e.g. environmental humanities.

Readings:

Mieke Bal, Traveling Concepts in the Humanities . University of Toronto Press, 2002

Darren Wershler, Lori Emerson, and Jussi Parikka, The Lab Book – open access at

https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/the-lab-book

University of Minnesota Press, 2022

2nd one: Media Archaeology as a Traveling Discipline

Media archaeology has become a core reference point in a variety of fields from art to media studies, cinema studies to photography. This talk will look at some of the key definitions and developments of the field and how media archaeology has developed across multiple decades. My own take in 2012 titled “What is Media Archaeology?” is only one way to view the field that itself has been changing in different ways and in different institutional contexts that resonates, again, beyond media studies proper. We will discuss authors from Erkki Huhtamo and Siegfried Zielinski to Giuliana Bruno.

Suggested reading:

Jussi Parikka, Operational Images, excerpt from a forthcoming book

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/133/515812/operational-images-between-light-and-data/

and

Environmental Humanities and/as Environmental Media

This session continues earlier themes but addresses specifically some of the intersections of environmental humanities and environmental media. I draw on some of my own work in these areas (such as the book Insect Media) but also on recent art and curatorial contexts that open up such themes to other audiences than academics. Hence, in addition to some theoretical points, we will watch and review some artistic takes that relate to this broader area.