Open seminar: Human Species Identity in the Anthropocene: A role for rights of nature? with Seth Epstein

Date: 13 October, 12:00–13:00
Location: Engelska parken Room 22-0031 (same entrance as Humanistiska teatern)
Lecturer: Seth Epstein, Researcher at Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society (CRS)
Website
Organiser: CEMUS, Centre for Environment and Development Studies, Uppsala University and SLU, CRS, Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society, Uppsala University, and Sofia Oreland, Department of Theology, Uppsala University
Contact person: Daniel Mossberg
Seminarium

Welcome to the second Environmental and Climate Humanities seminar with Seth Epstein titled “Human Species Identity in the Anthropocene: A role for rights of nature?”

Seth Epstein Human Species Identity in the Anthropocene: A role for rights of nature?

Moderated by Martha Middlemiss Lé Mon, CRS

Bio
I am a historian focusing on the U.S. in the 20th century and a researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society at Uppsala University. I am currently the lead investigator for a project based at CRS titled Realizing Rights of Nature: Sustaining Development and Democracy, which examines issues relevant to the UN’s global sustainable development goals identified in Agenda 2030. This project focuses on the actions of a growing number of jurisdictions over the past decade and a half to grant rights to nature. It further explores the potential challenges, politics, and resistance to conceiving and implementing such Rights of Nature (RoN) initiatives by placing them within the longer history of the expansion of rights and the creation of new legal subjects. The project has thus far produced two articles and our goal is to develop a handbook of primary and secondary sources about the relations between rights of nature and democracy. My previous research topics have included religious tolerance in the Jim Crow U.S. South, the employment of African Americans in the U.S. state of North Carolina between 1925 and 1950, and taxicab regulation in the 1920s and 1930s.