Congratulations to the following Center for Ideas & Society award winners!
✪ CONFERENCE AWARD
Eaton Speculative Fiction Conference: Reimagining the Archive
andré carrington (English), Loren Barbour (English), Chelsea-Mae Yuipco (Media & Cultural Studies), K Persinger (Media & Cultural Studies), and Liza Wemakor (English)
The 2020s thus far have been defined by numerous and often interrelated crises, which have prompted widespread conversation on the urgent need to imagine and implement better, different, and innovative solutions for the future. Influenced by feminist, queer, decolonial, and critical race theories, speculative fiction writing and scholarship have likewise become increasingly invested in care, resistance, and liberation as strategies toward futurity. In accordance with these concerns, this project will relaunch the Eaton Conference of Science Fiction around the theme “Reimagining the Archive” in order to investigate reparative approaches to speculative fiction and its history, specifically with the archive. From the prominence of the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy to its Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science program, the study of speculative fiction has deep significance to the University of California, Riverside. In seeking to revive the Eaton Conference, the organizers aim to bolster UCR’s prestigious reputation in the field and foster a network of new and emerging scholars and artists. Supporting emergent talent is an ongoing act of care that this version of the conference will prioritize as it addresses ongoing disparities in the field (and across academia) and (re)imagines the future of humanities research.
✪ WORKING GROUP AWARD
UCR Science and Technology Studies (STS) Workshop Series
Linda Hall (Anthropology) and Yolanda Moses (Anthropology)
The UCR Science and Technology Initiative will host a series of workshops to advance an interdisciplinary dialogue by UCR faculty across colleges about existing Science and Technology Studies (STS) knowledge and research. The participants will share interdisciplinary ways of knowing regarding STS and help to define the challenges, expectations, and possible future viability of a more integrative teaching and research model. The outcomes of these workshops will include creating new synergies across disciplines and with Island Empire communities. The workshops are intended to promote the collaborative research and problem solving that will support UCR’s goal to serve as a global partner and premier research institution in the international field of STS Studies.
Horror of Color Working Group
Magda Garcia (English)
The Horror of Color Working Group is a space for students and faculty to collaboratively engage research in horror studies with a specific focus on scholarship on horror and race and horror cultural productions by U.S.-based creators of color. The group brings together students and faculty across the humanities and social sciences to address topics ranging from the development and solidifying of genres such as Afro Horror, Indigenous Horror, and U.S. Latinx horror to fandoms of color with the goal of fostering intellectual exchange on the topic of EthnoHorror by 1) holding discussions of works in progress, 2) organizing conversations around shared readings, and 3) invited talks/panels.
✪ SYMPOSIUM AWARD
Self-Consciousness and Mutual Recognition
Alexandra Newton (Philosophy) and Andrews Reath (Philosophy)
That the subject, or the I, is not an object in the world is one of the most fundamental insights in philosophy. It is also one of the most difficult. It is an insight that is often associated with Kant, and with later German Idealism, but it is also prevalent in the French tradition and in early analytic philosophy. In this conference, participants will discuss the questions: How can we develop accounts of selfconsciousness and mutual recognition that do justice to this insight? What is it to be conscious of ourselves as subjects of thinking and of acting? And how do we recognize others as subjects? The questions will be approached through discussion of the history of philosophy and through its development in more recent approaches from contemporary philosophy. The conference is interdisciplinary in its reach, because it is only by answering these fundamental questions about selfconsciousness and mutual recognition that we can begin to understand the different ways in which we learn about ourselves and about others in the more specialized humanistic disciplines.