The coming catastrophe poses a challenge to thinking. Only recently have the interrelated events of human-induced climate change and mass extinction begun to unfold as a global media event of proportional magnitude. The proliferation of discourses around impending anthropogenic doom seems to have reached a virtualtipping point, from which there is no return to a “business as usual”-attitude. As the environmental conditions on which all human life depends change in ever more alarming rates, there seem to be few aspects of life, of policy making, and of theoretical work, that can remain unchanged. Scholars in the field of cultural and media theory, particularly in Weimar, are used to observing phenomena of change in terms of their historical becoming. While the identification of the historical causes (and causers) of anthropogenic change is decisive for the assessment of “what there is to be done”, the current situation is unique in that it also challenges habitual modes of thinking and forces us to train our eyes on the things to come.
As a part of this semesters "Bauhaus.Module", the lecture series "The Coming Catastrophe" invites everyone to Isabell Schrickel's upcoming lecture titled "Sustainability and Historiography - Several Options".
Isabell Schrickel is a PhD candidate at the Center for Global Sustainability and Cultural Transformation (Leuphana University / Arizona State University). She studied Media Theory, Art History and Journalism at Humboldt and Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Basel. In 2010 she received her master’s degree with a thesis on the media history of weather forecasting. From 2011-2013 she worked as a research associate at Technische Universität Berlin and in 2013 she began her thesis on the history of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) at MECS. She organized the MECS Annual Conference Dealing with Climate Change – Calculus & Catastrophe in the Age of Simulation in June 2015. She teaches at Humboldt University and Leuphana University. From April to October 2017 Isabell was visiting fellow at the Harvard Department of the History of Science. Currently, she is a guest researcher at the KLI and IIASA in Vienna. She holds memberships in the European Society for Environmental History and the Society for Social Studies of Science.
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