Cultural Imaginings of the Future: Reading Group
As humans and societies, we constantly produce images of the future: as a utopian paradise on Mars or dystopian climate catastrophe on earth; projections of inflation rates and unemployment figures; threatening pandemics and promises of eternal youth; worst case scenarios or just hoping for some good fortune; automation and robotification as Skynet doom or the end of work and the beginning of human flourishing.
Our reading group, which meets monthly to discuss two texts decided by group members, engages with cultural ideas and images of the future – how we contemplate, plan, visualise, and prepare for the future. Humanities scholars, dealing as we do with how humans imagine and narrate themselves and their surroundings, are well-placed to investigate our species as a future-creating animal capable of foresight, self-deception, planning and surprise.
Co-organisers: Antoinette Fage-Butler (English) and Mikkel Thorup (Philosophy and History of Ideas).