What might it mean to flourish in a world on the brink of extinction or exhaustion? Current fellows at Cornell’s Society for the Humanities are focusing their research on the theme of survival, examining this theme through historical, literary, political, environmental and cultural perspectives.
On Friday, Oct. 30, they will present their works-in-progress in an interdisciplinary conversation at the Fall Fellows' Conference, from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the Guerlac Room of the A.D. White House. The event is free and open to the public, and each of the seven presentations will be followed by a discussion with a faculty respondent and audience Q&A.
The 2026-27 focal theme, “Survival” invites scholars and artists to consider how individuals, communities and species endure amid precarity, catastrophe, environmental change, political upheaval and social transformation. The theme asks what it means not simply to live, but to “live on,” and explores questions of resilience, renewal, care, creativity, freedom and knowledge in the face of uncertainty.
Presenters on October 30 include, from the roster of 2026-27 Survival fellows: Jamie Budnick, assistant professor of sociology; Andy Dufton, archaeology, Dickinson College; Amanda Gaggioli, history, University of Memphis; Pamela Karimi, associate professor of architecture; and Ivanna Yi, assistant professor of Asian studies. Cornell Postdoctoral presenters include Jennifer Rabedeau, Humanities Scholars Program, and Jorden Sanders, Literatures in English.
The talks will span a broad swath of humanities topics. As a scholar of Korean literature and the environmental humanities, Yi looks at how writers articulate the sentience of the more-than-human world. Yi’s talk, “Dreaming of a Sentient Land: More-than-Human Kinship in Han Kang's ‘The Vegetarian,’” analyzes South Korean writer Han Kang’s novel “The Vegetarian” with a multispecies framework and explores the ways in which Han gestures towards interspecies communication between humans and trees.
In her work, Jennifer Rabedeau uses the concept of the palimpsest – a manuscript page that has been written on, erased and written on again – to explore how traces of the past persist within Thomas Hardy’s fiction. Her talk, “Thomas Hardy’s Palimpsests,” will examine how Hardy’s interests in architecture, archaeology and geology shaped his understanding of history as a series of overlapping layers, while also offering new insights into his writing process.
Jamie Budnick’s presentation, “Carrying Capacity: On (Not) Parenting in the Era of Climate Change,” examines how climate change is represented in media discourse as a factor influencing reproductive decision-making. Through a qualitative content analysis of sixteen years of coverage in major U.S. newspapers, the talk explores how “no kids for climate” claims are constructed and mobilized, revealing their role in shaping public debates about gender, generational change, mental health, political polarization and broader social concerns.
The full schedule of presentations is available on the Cornell Events Calendar.
The conference will be preceded by a keynote address on Thursday, October 29, at 5 p.m. at the A.D. White House. Beans Velocci, assistant professor of history and sociology of science and gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak on “Beams Aimed Directly at the Reproductive Organs: Radiation, Gonads, and Trans Mutations in the Cold War.” The lecture examines Cold War-era radiation science, anxieties about heredity and reproduction, and the intersections of atomic and transgender history as a lens for understanding changing ideas about sex in the mid-twentieth century.
A historian of science whose work employs queer, trans and feminist methodologies, Velocci recently published “Sex Isn’t Real: The Invention of an Incoherent Binary” and is currently researching the relationships among nuclear planning, reproduction and the future of sex. Their keynote will formally launch the fellows’ exploration of the theme of Survival for the academic year.
The spring Fellows Conference will take place on April 23, 2027.
Julie McLean is program manager for the Society for the Humanities
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