Abstract:The third UT-UC Interdisciplinary Faculty Forum brings together leading scholars from Japan and the United States to explore topics involving energy as found in engineering, medicine, environmental science, social sciences, and the humanities. Energy has been at the forefront of social, economic, and scientific concern throughout modernity. While it has typically been treated in mainstream public discourse as a self-evident resource and matter of national security, lately scholars have called attention to the broader material and discursive significance of energy in shaping assumptions regarding government, the laboring body, ethics, and social change. Through exchange and mutual stimulation between participants from different disciplines of the two universities, this forum seeks to animate current theoretical and social concerns with energy and generate novel interventions into ongoing questions around energy. To facilitate a truly interdisciplinary conversation, participants are encouraged to introduce experimental, open-ended questions that can engage scholars from across the fields.

Organizer: Institute of Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo