The Edinburgh Companion to the New European Humanities assesses the rise of the ‘New’ Humanities alongside the traditional disciplines and inter-disciplinary ‘studies’ areas. The volume is edited by Rosi Braidotti, Daan Oostveen (both Utrecht University), Hiltraud Casper-Hehne (University of Göttingen), and Marjan Ivković (University of Belgrade).
‘New’ or ‘Post’ Humanities
This is the first collection that highlights the strengths and contributions of the Humanities in the European region. The Edinburgh Companion to the New European Humanities stresses the positive and multidimensional impact of the Humanities on core areas of human experience, and their ability to formulate new frames to represent our collective and individual relation to the world. Further, it explores new ethical social imaginaries, gendered scenarios and spaces of decolonial transculturality.
The publication combines theoretical speculation with policy-making pragmatism and draws from many European languages and traditions. In its European scope and institutional representation, it takes an original approach and incorporates an exceptional degree of inter and trans-disciplinarity, covering areas including the intercultural humanities, post- and decolonial perspectives, digital humanities, medical humanities, environmental humanities and more.
This collection also confronts the threats the Humanities face today and proposes ways to respond. These threats include public discourses that question the value of the Humanities; the chronic underfunding of teaching and research at our universities and institutions, and the more fundamental risks to intellectual freedom, democracy and critical discourse, diversity, and the radical imagination posed by political and market forces and organisations.
Overall, this volume proposes innovative tools to increase our collective awareness of forms of injustice, exclusion and the suffering of both the human and the non-human inhabitants of this planet. It discusses the posthuman future of the Humanities and makes recommendations for the implementation of innovative approaches to the Humanities.
Applications are now open for the 2024 Summer school – The Feminist Philosopher, the Nomad, The Posthuman: A Week With Rosi Braidotti
This summer school course retraces Rosi Braidotti’s scholarly itinerary through a close reading of the figurations that have structured her thinking over the last 30 years. These are: the feminist philosopher, the nomad, and the posthuman. Each figuration is linked to a series of key publications and to a specific moment of Rosi Braidotti’s critical engagement with the cartographies of the present. The reading material for the intensive course will be selected from the key publications, although participants are also welcome to propose some of their favourites. Attention will be given also to Braidotti’s engagement with the arts and media performances, which has been lively over the years. The aim of the course is to provide a stimulating overview of Rosi Braidotti’s life-long effort to combine critique with creativity and radicalism with excellence.
The 2024 intensive Summer School course aims to dig deeper into and provide an extensive overview of Rosi Braidotti’s many essential contributions to the academic, political, and social world over her career, illuminating the converging work of the generations that followed through guest-lectures and panel discussions with those who have worked closely with Braidotti’s innovative work. As such the course will explore matters and methods of inter/trans and post-disciplinarity, post/decolonialism, posthumanism, as well as critical feminist theory and artistic practices.
The course will take place in person, at Utrecht University, with 30 participants. Selection of this course will be done by Professor Braidotti herself.
MORNINGS: 9:30-11 Lectures by Rosi Braidotti and selected guests, with Q&A
11:15-12:30 Open discussion or panel discussions
AFTERNOONS:
14-14:45 Short talks by invited guests
15-17 Seminar session with Rosi Braidotti : panel presentation by 6 participants on mandatory reading material
Costs
Course fee: €1000.00
All profits made from the summer school will go to the ROSANNA Fund which gives scholarships to women who have limited financial means and who need financial support to help them pursue studies. For more information, see: https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/alumni/contribute/contribute-to-an-ex…
For this course you are required to upload the following documents when applying:
From Björk to Beyoncé and from Laurie Anderson to Pussy Riot: all of these are covered in Posthuman Feminism, a book by Rosi Braidotti. This playlist seeks to serve as a navigational tool through the book using women’s bands and popular music.
Starting 2023 Rosi Braidotti is one of the ambassadors for the Dutch ‘Grandparents for Climate’ organization, giving her full support to the cause. As she stated in an interview with Trouw, she wishes to be a good ancestor, as to leave this world inhabitable, healthy and safe for the generations to come.
De Grootouders voor het Klimaat zijn gestart in het najaar van 2016.
Waarom de beweging Grootouders voor het Klimaat?
In een achttal landen is inmiddels al een beweging van Grandparents for Climate gestart.
Steeds vaker zien we de gevolgen van klimaatverandering om ons heen en voelen we het aan den lijve. Willen we de aarde leefbaar houden voor de volgende generaties, dan zullen we versneld naar een 100% duurzame energievoorziening moeten bewegen. Die transitie is al aan de gang en de Grootouders voor het Klimaat zetten zich hiervoor in en komen op voor alle kinderen en kleinkinderen
In Nederland zijn de Grootouders voor het Klimaat actief met Pleinbijeenkomsten, voorleesacties, lezingen/webinars, lokale acties en natuurlijk door ondertekening en uitreiking van het Manifest. Grootouders en senioren die onze zorgen delen sluiten zich aan bij deze internationale beweging.
Wij zijn overtuigd van de dringende noodzaak van verandering. We zijn evenzeer overtuigd van de mogelijkheid van verandering als voldoende mensen daaraan meewerken.
As Rosi Braidotti herself declares: “ In mijn visie is het feminisme een voorganger van klimaatactivisme. We kunnen veel leren van ecofeministen, inheemse en decoloniale feministen over het belang van de bescherming van de aarde en het doorgeven van waarden aan toekomstige generaties. Klimaatverandering kun je niet los zien van sociale en transnationale rechtvaardigheid. Hoewel we allemaal van elkaar verschillen, zitten we toch in hetzelfde schuitje. Laten we dus samenwerken om verandering ten goede teweeg te brengen.”
Feminist theorist Donna Haraway and literature-and-science researcher Bruno Clarke pay tribute to evolutionary theorist Lynn Margulis. In this special edition of An Evening With, they explore Margulis’s pioneering theories of symbiosis and Gaia, discuss their implications for current research in sympoiesis and posthumanism, and celebrate the publication of Writing Gaia: The Scientific Correspondence of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. The event will be moderated by Rosi Braidotti.
Donna Haraway is Professor Emerita at the University of California-Santa Cruz.
Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) fought against the orthodoxies of genetic determinism and promoted the concept of symbiosis as the fundamental process uniting biology and ecology. Margulis also collaborated with James Lovelock to develop and promote the Gaia hypothesis, which in her view sees Gaia as the planetary sum of all symbioses.
Bruno Clarke is the Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Literature and Science at Texas Tech University.
Rosi Braidotti is Emerita Professor at the University of Utrecht and affiliated to the Nieuwe Instituut.
This event is organised in collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of TU Delft. TU Delft is organising a masterclass with Donna Haraway on 8 December 2023. For more information, visit the website of TU Delft.
The Master Class is held in conjunction with Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, the host of ‘An Evening With
Donna Haraway, Bruno Clarke and Rosi Braidotti’ on Thursday, 7th December, the ‘Posthuman Symbioses Masterclass’ on 7th December at BK/TU Delft is open to a maximum of 100 participating MSc students and PhD candidates.
The Masterclass is organised around two sessions where a total of 12 selected students will be given the opportunity to deliver a brief pitch presentation of their research (maximum of 5 slides, 10 minutes) with a following discussion round. The event is conceived as an intergenerational experience of ‘learning-with’ Haraway and Braidotti as leading (eco)feminist/posthumanist theorists, and (PhD) students with a keen interest in adopting and adapting their approaches in their own research and designerly work. The wider intention is to generally foster inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to architecture and urban design that embrace the life sciences or humanities, and especially posthuman/sympoietic approaches, situated forms of knowledge, and ‘minor’ angles.
“Posthuman Feminism is astonishingly wide-ranging and characteristically impressive in its contemporary relevance. Attending closely to submerged knowledge traditions including Indigenous and Black perspectives, Braidotti enriches our understanding of both posthumanism and feminism by showing how they are mutually generative and intimately imbricated. Everyone who engages with ideas emerging in these areas will need to know what this book has to say.”
Simone Bignall, University of Technology Sydney
“This profound and energising book is uncannily insightful: read it as a talisman against the present and as a map out of its baleful conditions.”
In a context marked by the virulent return of patriarchal and white supremacist attitudes, a new generation of feminist activists are continuing the struggle: these are very feminist times. But how do these and other movements relate to the contemporary posthuman condition?
In this important new book, Rosi Braidotti examines the implications of the posthuman turn for feminist theory and practice. She defines the posthuman turn as a convergence between posthumanism on the one hand and post-anthropocentrism on the other, and she examines their complex relationship and joint impact. Braidotti claims that mainstream posthuman scholarship has neglected feminist theory, while in fact feminism is one of the precursors of the posthuman turn, through diverse social movements and political traditions. Posthuman Feminism is an analytic and creative response to contemporary conditions and a call to action. It highlights the constraints but also the potentialities available to feminist political subjects as they confront the ever-growing injustices of sexism, racism, ecocide and neoliberal capitalism.
This bold new text by a leading feminist philosopher will be of great interest to students and scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences.
On the 6th of February 2023 the online book launch of the Posthuman Glossary will take place.
Join us in celebrating its release with several contributors and the Glossary’s editors – Professor Rosi Braidotti, Dr. Emily Jones, and Goda Klumbytė.
The notion of the posthuman continues to both intrigue and confuse, not least because of the huge number of ideas, theories and figures associated with this term. More Posthuman Glossary provides a way in to the dizzying array of posthuman concepts, providing vivid accounts of emerging terms. It is much more than a series of definitions, however, in that it seeks to imagine and predict what new terms might come into being as this exciting field continues to expand. A follow-up volume to the brilliant interventions of Posthuman Glossary (2018), this book extends and elaborates on that work, particularly focusing on concepts of race, indigeneity and new ideas in radical ecology. It also includes new and emerging voices within the new humanities and multiple modes of communicating ideas.
This is an indispensable glossary for those who are exploring what the non-human, inhuman and posthuman might mean in the 21st century.
The celebration will take place online via TEAMS, a link will be distributed in due course.
On Thursday the 10th of November, Professor Rosi Braidotti will give a free lecture from 8–9.30 pm at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. All are cordially invited to attend the lecture.
Explore the rhythms of politics and activism through a conversation about music with philosopher Rosi Braidotti and host Shay Kreuger, and join the next iteration of Submerged Heritage, where invited guest dr. Daphina Misiedjan explores the situation surrounding the Brokopondo lake in Suriname.
Thursday Night Live! is a weekly evening devoted to burning questions in architecture, design and digital culture, featuring leading speakers from home and abroad. Het Nieuwe Café serves a meal, there’s music from DJs or live perfomers, the museum is open for free and our Detour Guides (aka tour guides) show you around the exhibitions. Meet people, be inspired and join the discussion!
You can find further details regarding the event linked below:
Rosi Braidotti en Shay Kreuger keren terug voor het derde evenement in hun reeks gesprekken over muziek. Deze keer bekijken ze hoe muziek sterke stemmen kan dragen en dromen van verandering kan verspreiden. Hun gesprek verkent de ritmes van politiek en activisme die de stad hebben opgeschud.
In this interview with Marjorie van Elven for the DUB digital news page of Utrecht University, prof. Rosi Braidotti reflects on her career at Utrecht University, and discusses her aspirations for her future, as well as the future of the world. She discusses the state of the world and the rights of women, as well as the concerning increase of far-right parties in the political landscape.
