This Friday: Jeremijenko to Speak at UCLA

Prospectus artist Natalie Jeremijenko (Environmental Health Clinic + Cross(X)Species Adventure Club) will speak at “Making a Real Difference” Friday, May 26, 10 – noon, at the IDRE/Visualization Portal, Math and Sciences Building, University of California, Los Angeles. The event will be streamed live; join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, or Android at https://ucla.zoom.us/j/684584912

Part of Digital Humanities at UCLA, “Making a Real Difference” brings together a group of seminal scholars, builders and activists to discuss the role of scholarship and the humanities in the world. How can we make the world a better place? How can we critical, constructive and constructional at the same time?  There is a great deal of power in the humanities that can be unlocked. The humanities often end up in an outside position, which in some ways is productive, but also hinders us from actively engaging with societal, cultural and technological issues and challenges in ways that would benefit our students, ourselves and the world. This is not about giving up a critical role or succumbing to external pressures to be useful, but rather to follow a humanistic ethos, take responsibility and further our research and teaching.

“There is much vital scholarship and social engagement in the humanities and one pertinent question is how (and if) such involvement and engagement can be scaled up and what new practices, platforms and understandings must be developed inside and outside the humanities. It seems likely that the digital (broadly thinking) will play an important role in such development as well as collaborative processes where conceptual thinking, critical perspectives and making come together. Can (and should) humanists lead teams to build infrastructure and new social-technical systems?”

Other speakers will include David Theo Goldberg, UC Humanities Research Institute; Tara McPherson, University of Southern California; and Sarah Roberts, UCLA.