Critical Future Studies

A particular focus at the chair lies on critical and interdisciplinary approaches to human-technology-environment relationships and the imagination of possible futures against the background of the climate emergency and technocultural transformations. We are interested in amplifying the role of literature and culture in the production, translation, critique and contextualization of technoscientific developments and their implication for social and ecological systems. Technological revolutions and innovations have cultural effects and histories. The humanities can help trace these cultural reverberations and offer visions of viable futures, while staying critical of the belief that all it takes is a technological fix. This entails questioning and historicizing the narratives, values, aesthetics, and ideologies that have driven technological and scientific progress, from the early modern period to the present. The formation of western modernity is inextricable from the histories of colonialism, ableism, patriarchy, and ecological devastation. In the face of these entanglements, what does it mean to envision the future otherwise? Who imagines or designs the future? Every future has a story, a setting, a context, and a protagonist.

The following interrelated fields are part of what we understand as critical future studies:

Science Fiction Studies | Critical Posthumanisms | Critical Futurisms | Environmental Humanities | Energy Humanities and Petrocultures | Literature and Science | Materialist Media Theory | Contemporary North American Indigenous Studies | Critical Disability Studies