The session schedule is as followed:

session one (Elias and Moraru) on "The Planetary Turn;"
session two (Elias) on “The Temporality of Dialogue”;
and session three (Moraru) on "Coevalness and Critical Chronography."

This symposium is part of the Coevality: Ethical Being in a Time of Total Change series.

Does the Framework Convention on Climate Change, formally affirmed by 195 nations in Paris on December 12, 2015, signal a turning point in our ability to work in the common interests of all sentient beings and of the worlds in which we live? The negotiators acknowledged the inequalities evident between and within nations, the differences between cultures, individual and group diversity, and the uneven development of institutions, while at the same time presumed the equal value of all parties, places, and polities. The Convention creates a framework for a process for addressing the global problem of climate change that, if followed closely, will be pursued in the same spirit in which it was conceived--one that affirmed, rather than denied, coevalness in all relationships.

How generalizable is this spirit in our closely connected yet highly differentiated, rapidly expanding yet deeply inequitable, global (dis)order? What does coevality have to offer as a basis for a truly contemporary politics, sociality, economic exchange, or aesthetic creativity? Coevality: Global Ethics in a Time of Total Change is a research project, a graduate seminar, and a series of public lectures and symposia offered by University of Pittsburgh faculty, students, and a number of distinguished visitors. We will pursue a carefully focused reconceptualization of the concept of coevality, and of the host of ideas with which it is associated, situating them within a realistic read of the settings--social, economic, political, artistic--in which coevalness must operate today.

The event will be led by the inaugural Global Studies Faculty Fellow, Terry Smith, who is Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory. They are presented in cooperation with relevant departments, and will be offered as contributions to the Year of the Humanities in the University.