Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU)

University of Chicago, Division of Social Sciences

About

Established at the University of Chicago in 2022, the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU) is an interdisciplinary platform for critical thinking, advanced research, and innovative pedagogy on the societal and spatial dimensions of climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental transformation. Our faculty and students seek to investigate and respond to the environmental crises of our time not only by advancing climate change awareness and environmental literacy, but by actively centering questions about climate change and socio-environmental interdependencies in the epistemologies, conceptual frameworks, analytic methods, data sources, and normative foundations of social research at large.

This preliminary website is a repository of information and announcements regarding CEGU's ongoing activities as we formalize programs of teaching, research, and events. A more comprehensive website will be developed over the coming months.

For information on our undergraduate curriculum, please visit the website of the Program on the Global Environment.

CEGU Events

In winter and spring 2022, CEGU faculty organized a series of panel discussions dealing with some of the central issues we hope to explore in our future work. We also co-sponsored several additional events on closely allied issues, which are detailed below.

poster for Environment, Democracy, and Social Movements; April 2022 CEGU event

CEGU Event

Climate & the Legacies of Empire

Thursday, February 10, 2022
4:30–6:00pm CT
Zoom

Sunil Amrith
Yale University

Keston Perry
Williams College

Elizabeth Chatterjee
University of Chicago
(moderator)

[View Recording]
[View Reading List]

poster for Energy Histories and Geographies, February 2022 CEGU event

CEGU Event

Energy Histories & Geographies

Thursday, February 24, 2022
4:30–6:00pm CT
Zoom

Thea Riofrancos
Providence College

Julie Klinger
University of Delaware

Ryan Cecil Jobson
University of Chicago
(moderator)

[View Recording]
[View Reading List]

poster for Environment, Democracy, and Social Movements; April 2022 CEGU event

CEGU Event

Environment, Democracy, & Social Movements

Thursday, April 21, 2022
4:30–6:00pm CT
Zoom

Alyssa Battistoni
Barnard College

Megan Black
MIT

Fredrik Albritton Jonsson & Lisa Wedeen
University of Chicago
(moderators)

[View Recording]
[View Reading List]

poster for Animals, Territories, Environments; April 2022 CEGU event

CEGU Event

Animals, Territories, Environments

Friday, April 29, 2022
12:30–2:00pm CT
Zoom

Matthew Gandy
University of Cambridge

Mindi Schneider
Wageningen University

Neil Brenner & Victoria Saramago
University of Chicago
(moderators)

[View Recording]
[View Reading List]

Co-sponsored Events

poster for No Empires, No Dust Bowls; March 2022 CEGU event

Co-sponsored Event: Sociology Department Colloquium

No Empires, No Dust Bowls: Lessons from the First Global Environmental Crisis

Wednesday, March 2, 2022, 12:30–1:50pm CT, Zoom

Hannah Holleman
Amherst College

Organized by the Sociology Department; Co-sponsored by the Urban Theory Lab and the Faculty Working Group for the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU)

poster for Property, Personhood, and Police; March 2022 CEGU event

Co-sponsored Event: Frizzell Learning & Speaker Series

Property, Personhood, and Police: Racial Banishment in Postcolonial Los Angeles

Thursday, March 3, 2022, 5:00–6:30pm CT, Zoom

Ananya Roy
UCLA

Organized by the Program on the Global Environment and the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights; co-sponsored by the Faculty Working Group for the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU)

[View Recording]

poster for Fossil Futures, 2022 Nicholson event

Co-sponsored Event: Nicholson Faculty Lecture

Fossil Futures: Rethinking British History in the Anthropocene

Tuesday, March 29, 2022, 5:00pm CT

Zoom

Fredrik Albritton Jonsson
University of Chicago

Dipesh Chakrabarty
University of Chicago
(moderator)

Organized by the Nicholson Center for British Studies; co-sponsored by the Faculty Working Group for the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU)

poster for Lenticular Ontologies, March 2022 3CT event

Co-sponsored Event: Theorizing the Present

Lenticular Ontologies

Wednesday, March 30, 2022, 5:00pm CT

SSRB Tea Room & Zoom (hybrid event)

Ghassan Hage
University of Melbourne

Organized by the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT); co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, and the Faculty Working Group for the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU)

If you require accommodations to attend any of these events, please contact us.

People

Faculty

Staff

Contact

[cegu@uchicago.edu]