While the phenomenon of planetary climate change is defined primarily by natural scientists and is often addressed, in practical terms, by the policy sciences, this lecture asks: What can the more humanist disciplines – or the humanities, as a branch of thought – contribute to our understanding of the phenomenon and how are they, in turn, challenged by it? The lecture will seek to provide some preliminary and provisional answers to these questions.

Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College, at the University of Chicago. He is also a faculty fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory and an associate faculty of the Department of English.