[PHILOS-L] William Connolly on Stormy Weather: ISEE Seminar Series in Environmental Thought

[Linde De Vroey]

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 Dear colleagues, 

You are warmly invited to attend the next lecture in the ISEE Seminar Series in Environmental Thought, organised by the European Network of the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE). 

Prof. William E. Connolly (Johns Hopkins University) –  December 8, 4pm-5:30pm CET

‘Stormy Weather: Pagan Cosmologies, Christian Times, Climate Wreckage’

Abstract

William E. Connolly introduces his latest book Stormy Weather. Composed as a counter-history of western philosophical thought, Stormy Weather explores the role western cosmologies have played in the conquests of paganism in Europe and the Americas, the production of climate wreckage, and the concealment of that wreckage from western humanists and earth scientists until late in the day. Drawing on the work of earth scientists, indigenous thinkers, naturalists, humanists, and students of nonwestern cosmologies, Connolly pursues a conception of time as a multiplicity to come to terms with the vicissitudes of climate destruction and the grandeur of an earth neither highly susceptible to mastery nor designed to harmonize smoothly with humans. Ultimately, he contends that critical intellectuals today must not remain enclosed in disciplinary silos, or even in “the humanities” as currently defined, to do justice to our moment of climate wreckage. 

Short bio

William E. Connolly is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor at Johns Hopkins, where he teaches political theory. His recent work focuses on intersections between capitalism, inequality, climate wreckage, the dangers of fascism, and the question how scholars can become intellectuals in today's world. His many books include Why I Am Not A Secularist (1999), A World of Becoming (2011), Facing The Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming (2017) and Climate Machines, Fascist Drives, and Truth (2019). In 2010, he was ranked the fourth most influential political theorist in America over the last twenty years in a poll of American political theorists, after Rawls, Habermas, and Foucault. In 2017 he was presented the Distinguished Scholar Award by the International Studies Association. Connolly is co-moderator of the Blog The Contemporary Condition, where he posts regularly on current issues, particularly on the dangers of fascism and the bumpy relations between capitalist greenhouse emissions in temperate zone states and the planetary amplifiers that distribute effects disproportionately to nontemperate regions.

Registration 

The seminars is open to all but registration is required. To receive a zoom link, please send an email to leonie.No...@Univie.ac.at  

About the ISEE Seminars in Environmental Thought 

These seminars are held online on zoom every two months, covering different fields and topics related to environmental ethics. 
Dates and Speakers for 2025-2026: 

October 13, 4pm-5:30pm CET 
Prof. Bernice Bovenkerk (University of Wageningen)
‘The Synergy between AI and Biotechnology for Conservation’

December 8, 4pm-5:30pm CET
Prof. William Connolly (Johns Hopkins University) 
‘Stormy Weather: Pagan Cosmologies, Christian Times, Climate Wreckage’

February 2, 4pm-5:30pm CET 
Dr. Elisa Aaltola (University of Turku)
‘Animal Ethical Mourning and Misanthropic Melancholia’

April 13, 4pm-5:30pm CET 
Dr. Ariadne Collins (University of St. Andrews)
‘Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield’

Best wishes, 

Leonie Bossert and Linde De Vroey
(European ISEE coordinators) 

Linde....@Uantwerpen.be
+32 471 29 74 83

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