The climate crisis unfolds through a series of environmental emergencies at once abrupt and long-churning. These emergencies are deeply interwoven and yet, at the same time, engender unique and emergent environments of disaster, struggle, and social reinvention. How might we understand the roots of these transformations while attending to the particular environments where emergency erupts? How, in other words, might we think environmental emergencies and emergent environments together?

CEGU’s inaugural conference brings together scholars from across the social sciences and humanities—including agrarian studies, digital humanities, ecology, environmental history, geography, literature, planning, and urban sociology—to dialogue and debate about these issues, their historical genealogies, and future implications. The conference opens with the inaugural Calvin and Freda Redekop Lectures in Environment and Society and will feature panels on agrarian environments, spatial media, urbanization, and waste with leading scholars in conversation with CEGU faculty.