Aspirational Humanities: The “How” of Responding

The aspirational stance of environmental, queer and urban humanities can help us better understand the opportunities and risks associated with the humanities reaching outward, especially in the context of so-called societal challenges, complex problems, and missions. This panel will present some recent work on the “aspirational humanities”, including their framing, epistemology, imaginaries and tensions. We will discuss how an aspirational humanities relates to the “how” of humanistic critical engagement in the world and a “new university” powered by critical-connective tissue.

Patrik Svensson is a scholar, writer, curator and entrepreneur. His current work is on conditions of knowledge production, critical design, digital humanities, and mobilizing humane/humanistic competence and knowledge to collaboratively respond to societal challenges and complex problems. As a practitioner and leader, he is committed to building value-driven, generous, sharp and deeply collaborative institutions and platforms.

He was Visiting Professor of Digital Humanities at UCLA 2016-2020, Distinguished Visiting Fellow/Visiting Professor at CUNY Graduate Center 2015-2016, and Professor of Humanities and Information Technology at Umeå University 2012-2020. Svensson is the former Director of HUMlab (in Umeå, Sweden 2000-2014). He was a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies during the Spring Semester of 2022.

• For in-person attendees, light refreshments and drinks will be provided.
• For online attendees, the event will be livestreamed on ASU Live.

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