Humanities on the Edge lecture series launching 5th year

            Humanities on the Edge, a premier lecture series for theoretical research in the humanities, has accomplished much more than its organizers expected in such a short time.

            Now in its fifth year, Humanities on the Edge has become notable in scholarly circles and has launched two additional projects in theoretical and critical humanities research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

            The series was launched in 2010, the work of two UNL associate professors of English -- Marco Abel and Roland Vegso, who wanted to form an intellectual community on campus across disciplinary lines.

            This year's series, "States of Exception," will open Oct. 2 with a presentation by Ursula Heise of the University of California, Los Angeles, titled "BioCities: Urban Futures and the Reinvention of Nature."

            "States of Exception" is a borrowed term from Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who argues that power concentrations increase in times of crisis and that as a society, we have been in a continued state of crisis and a time of growth in governmental power. Lectures in this year's series will address this sense of crisis and how it is affecting the world. Heise's talk will examine this concept from an environmental perspective and look at how humankind's perception of its relationship with the environment has changed.

            "If you think about this, the very idea of crisis implies that you are in an exceptional situation, not a normal situation. It has been argued that we are now, globally, entering a perpetual state of exception -- that we are now living in a state of perpetual crisis and there are quite a number of unpleasant consequences of this," Vegso said.

            "Agamben's interest and our interests in this year's series focus on politicians, in these crises, who say 'here are these temporary measures.' They call them temporary, but they are permanent. They're not going away. For example, you can look at the war on terror, which is this very broad term, but it allows laws to be passed such as the Patriot Act."

            The lectures are in the Sheldon Museum of Art, 12th and R streets, and are free and open to the public. This year's schedule is:

• Oct. 2, 5:30 p.m.: Ursula Heise, professor, Department of English/Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA, "BioCities: Urban Futures and the Reinvention of Nature."
• Nov. 6, 5:30 p.m.: Gregg Lambert, Dean's Professor of the Humanities, Syracuse University, "To Have Done with the 'State of Exception.'"
• March 19, 2015, 5:30 p.m.: Adam Kotsko, assistant professor of humanities, Shimer College, "The Prince of This World: The Devil and Political Theology."
• April 2, 2015, 5:30 p.m.: Siva Vaidhyanathan, Robertson Professor in Media Studies, University of Virginia, "The Operating System of Your Life: How Tech Companies and Big Data Govern Your Identity, Knowledge and Refrigerator."
• April 16, 2015, 5:30 p.m.: Cristina Rodriguez, professor of law, Yale Law School, "Immigration Reform and the Political Value of Manufactured Crisis."

Writer: Deann Gayman, University Communications