Pedagogy

CSSE 2023: Reimagining Science and Education in the Anthropocene

CSSE Conference - May 27-June 1, 2023 - York University - Toronto, Canada

This symposium invites a transdisciplinary discussion about reimagining education in the geologic and political times often referred to as the Anthropocene (a term that is uneven in its affects and has its own politics and history). It brings together the work of educators and researchers from many different locations and disciplines in an effort to meet the CSSE 2023 call for reimaginings and reconfigurations of education for justice and the flourishing of all life.


Jessie Beier — Black Hole Sustainability

In this presentation/provocation, I will respond to the questions posed, and then pose a few more, via a short speculative study of what I call “black hole sustainability.” My own take will approach the tensions raised by the Anthropocene, and more specifically the affirmative relaunching of post-Anthropocene educational futurity, by situating the panel questions in relation to education and the problem of sustainable futures. In a move to enact a resituating of (science) education, I bring the (purported) problem of educational futurity in contact with the computational imaging of a black hole so as to develop a weird pedagogy of endurance — a black hole sustainability - that might be capable of upending education’s unquestioned salvation narratives so as to navigate horizonless futures. Taking off from this example, I will raise questions about the potentials, but also limitations, of speculative practice in and as educational research.

Ahuman Pedagogy Book // Out Now!

“What the world needs now, in the Anthropocene, is an Ahuman Pedagogy, one that de-centers the hu-man, and challenges the eco-political and aesthetic situation of education today. This is an important book, because it is a machine of/for change…plug in!”

—Bernd Herzogenrath, Professor, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, and editor of Film as Philosophy and Sonic Thinking: A Media Philosophical Approach

“This is shock therapy for business-as-usual education, and a maze: As one door slams in my face, another one opens next to it. All contributions in this remarkable volume will not appeal to everyone, but they certainly won’t leave anyone unaffected. Together, they redirect education to confront its own premises in impossible times.“

—Helena Pedersen, Department of Pedagogical, Curricular, and Professional Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and author of Schizoanalysis and Animal Science Education


This book brings together a collection of multi-disciplinary voices to discuss, debate, and devise a series of ahuman pedagogical proposals that aim to address the challenging ecological, political, social, economic, and aesthetic milieu within which education is situated today. Attending to contemporary calls to decenter all-too-human educational research and practice, while also coming to terms with the limits and inheritances through which such calls are made possible in the first place, this book aims to interrogate, but also invent, what the editors call an ahuman pedagogy. Organized in three main sections—Conjuring an Ahuman Pedagogy, Machinic Re/distributions, and Non-pedagogies for Unthought Futures—this multi-disciplinary experiment in ahuman pedagogies for the age of the Anthropocene offers an experimental—albeit always speculative and incomplete—series of pedagogical proposals that work to unthink and counter-actualize educational futures-as-usual.

Beier, J. & jagodzinski, j. (Eds.). (2022). Ahuman pedagogy: Multidisciplinary perspectives for education in the Anthropocene. London/New York: Palgrave MacMillan.