Designing Relationally: Making and Restor(y)ing Life

Friday, February 26th 2021, 12:30pm
Online Event, 2400 Ridge Rd Berkeley, CA 94709

Designing Relationally: Making and Restor(y)ing Life

Join us on February 26th from 12:30pm to 2:30pm PST in welcoming Dr. Arturo Escobar, Dr. Michal Osterweil, and Dr. Kriti Sharma for a panel discussion on their forthcoming book from Bloomsbury, UK: Designing Relationally: Making and Restor(y)ing Life.

The book asks the question, “If we took seriously the premise that all things are radically interdependent, what would we design and create in our world — here in the midst of the intersecting and escalating social and ecological crises of the 21st Century — and how?”

Watch Here
 

Panelists:

Arturo Escobar is Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Research Associate with the Culture, Memory, and Nation group at Universidad del Valle (Cali) and the Cultural Studies groups at Universidad Javeriana (Bogota). Over the past twenty-five years, he has worked closely with several Afro-Colombian social movements in the Colombian Pacific, particular the Process of Black Communities (PCN).  His most well-known book is Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995, 2nd Ed. 2011).

 

Michal Osterweil’s research focuses on contemporary social movements and their knowledge production. Her dissertation focused on the theoretical-practice and political imaginaries of the Italian “Global Justice Movement” and related transnational networks, in particular those affiliated with Zapatismo. She has also published on World and Regional Social Forums, as well as other actors active in contemporary anti-capitalist movements. She is interested in the “new political imaginary” being developed at the intersection of the Counter-Summits, World Social Forum and Zapatista movements.

 

Kriti Shaktima Sharma works as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Geobiology at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Tovaangar, and studies microbes at the bottom of the ocean in the laboratory of Dr. Victoria Orphan. Her book Interdependence: Biology and Beyond (Fordham University Press, New York, 2015) has been cited and used to teach classes in ecology, philosophy, environmental humanities, feminist science studies, Black feminist liberatory practice, Indigenous ontologies, theology, and more. Interdependence has also inspired artists who have engaged the book in poetry, performance art, and sculpture.

 

Rita D. Sherma is founding Director and Associate Professor at the Mira & Ajay Shingal Center for Dharma Studies; Core Doctoral Faculty; and Co-Chair of Sustainability 360 Initiative at GTU. She is co-founder of the American Academy of Religion’s Hinduism Program Unit, founding Vice President of DANAM (Dharma Academy of North America)—a scholarly society for research on Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain religious & interreligious studies—and serves on the Board of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. Sherma has authored/edited/co-edited several books and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of "Journal of Dharma Studies." She serves on the Editorial Board of "Reading Religion" Journal (an AAR publication). Her pedagogical approach goes beyond encounters in the classroom to create collaborations with her students in research, writing, publications, and sponsoring students' leadership in their disciplines.

 

 

Respondents:

Clive Dilnot is professor of design studies in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons The New School for Design, which he joined in 2002 as Senior Associate Dean in Academic Affairs. Previously, he was professor of design studies and Director of Design Initiatives at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and taught at Harvard University and at universities and colleges in England, Hong Kong, and Australia. Although his teaching and writing has focused on design history, criticism, and theory, Dilnot’s scholarship includes the study of ethics—a subject he addressed in his book Ethics? Design?, published in 2005—and the role of design capabilities in creating a humane world.

 

Christopher Key Chapple is Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology and founding Director of the Master of Arts in Yoga Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. A specialist in the religions of India, he has published more than twenty books, including the recent Living Landscapes: Meditations on the Elements in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Yogas (SUNY Press). He serves as advisor to multiple organizations including the Forum on Religion and Ecology (Yale), the Ahimsa Center (Pomona), the Dharma Academy of North America (Berkeley), the Jain Studies Centre (SOAS, London), the South Asian Studies Association, and International School for Jain Studies (New Delhi). He teaches online through the Center for Religion and Spirituality (LMU) and YogaGlo.

 

Background image attribution: martin-sanchez-XxD4AQr1ats-unsplash

This event is online only