Possible Worlds: The UCLA – Berggruen Institute Speaker Series is a new partnership between the UCLA Division of Humanities and the Berggruen Institute.
This lecture was featured on IDEAS, a documentary radio program from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Listen to IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed interview Kim Stanley Robinson about his talk and his optimistic vision for our climate future here.
About Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science-fiction writer. He is the author of more than 20 books, including the internationally bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently The Ministry for the Future, Red Moon, New York 2140, Aurora, Shaman, Green Earth, and 2312. In 1995, he was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, and he returned in 2016 as part of their Antarctic media program. In 2008, he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine. He works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and UC San Diego’s Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. His work has been translated into 25 languages and has won a dozen awards in five countries, including the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016, asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.”
Featuring a discussion with moderator Ursula Heise
Ursula K. Heise is Chair of the Department of English and Director of LENS, the Lab for Environmental Narrative Strategies, at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow and former President of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Her research and teaching focus on contemporary literature; environmental culture in the Americas, Western Europe, and Japan; narrative theory; media theory; literature and science; and science-fiction. Her most recent book is Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Heise is the managing editor of Futures of Comparative Literature: The ACLA Report on the State of the Discipline (Routledge, 2016), and co-editor, with Jon Christensen and Michelle Niemann, of The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities (2016). She wrote and produced Urban Ark Los Angeles for the public TV station KCET, a short documentary film about the red-crowned parrots of East Los Angeles. Detailed information about her publications, upcoming lectures, and courses can be found on her website, www.uheise.net.
About the Series
Possible Worlds: The UCLA – Berggruen Institute Speaker Series is a new partnership between the UCLA Division of Humanities and the Berggruen Institute. This semiannual series will bring some of today’s most imaginative intellectual leaders and creators to deliver public talks on the future of humanity. Through the lens of their singular achievements and experiences, these trailblazers in creativity, innovation, philosophy and politics will lecture on provocative topics that explore current challenges and transformations in human progress.
UCLA faculty and students have long been at the forefront of interpreting the world’s legacy of language, literature, art and science. UCLA Humanities serves a vital role in readying future leaders to articulate their thoughts with clarity and imagination, to interpret the world of ideas, and to live as informed citizens in an increasingly complex world. We are proud to be partnering in this lecture series with the Berggruen Institute, whose work addresses the “Great Transformations” taking place in technology and culture, politics and economics, global power arrangements, and even how we perceive ourselves as humans. The Institute seeks to connect deep thought in the human sciences — philosophy and culture — to the pursuit of practical improvements in governance.
A selection committee comprising representatives of UCLA and the Berggruen Institute has been formed to make recommendations for lecturers. The committee includes:
• Ursula Heise, Professor and Chair, Department of English; Professor, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; Marcia H. Howard Term Chair in Literary Studies
• Pamela Hieronymi, Professor of Philosophy
• Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Professor of Urban Planning; Associate Provost for Academic Planning
• Todd Presner, Associate Dean, Digital Initiatives; Chair of the Digital Humanities Program; Michael and Irene Ross Endowed Chair of Yiddish Studies; Professor of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature
• Lynn Vavreck, Professor, Department of Political Science; Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy
• David Schaberg, Senior Dean of the UCLA College; Dean of Humanities; Professor, Asian Languages & Cultures
• Nils Gilman, Vice President of Programs, the Berggruen Institute
