Center for Humanistic Inquiry Teaching Utopia in Dystopian Times (Childcare Provided)

This panel discussion brings together scholars and practitioners to examine the question: how do you teach utopian ideas in a time filled with conflict and upheaval?

Ecologically, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, our world seems to be in a state of chaos and on the brink of still more dysfunction and disaster. Floods and fires threaten the planetary ecosystem; democracy is imperiled. Yet, at precisely these moments, it is more important than ever to offer hope, teach alternative perspectives and work for a better future. Historical and theoretical models can reveal different visions of how to live; architectural and environmental design created, per force, during times of transformation and crisis can imagine a different system of care for communities and for the planet. By looking at case studies that focus on diverse times, places, and landscapes, three speakers will explore the past, present, and future as sites of utopian imagining.

Kate Orff is a Professor at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture and Planning and Preservation, and Director of the Urban Design Program. Orff is an activist whose visionary work on design for climate dynamics has been shared and developed in collaboration with arts institutions, governments, and scholars worldwide. Her design studios and seminars aim to discover new ways of integrating social life, infrastructure, urban form, biodiversity and community-based change. Founder of SCAPE, an award-winning architectural practice, based in lower Manhattan, where she directs the design of all projects, Orff was awarded a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship. 

Justin R. Ritzinger is an associate professor if Religious Studies at the University of Miami, in Florida. His scholarship examines the relationship between modern and contemporary Buddhism and anarchist thought in Chinese culture. Ritzinger is the author of Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism (2017) and articles on Buddhism, anarchism, and Chinese society. He teaches such classes as "Introduction to Buddhism," "Buddhist Ethics and Social Justice" and "Karma."

Demetra Vogiatzaki is an architect-engineer and a historian of 18th century architecture, with a Ph.D. in History of Architecture from Harvard University. Her doctoral research focused on the politics of architectural imagination in the Enlightenment, and her current work is geared towards the critical infrastructure of the French colonial state in Canada. As a trained designer, Vogiatzaki works on architectural form, and has a developed pedagogy that revolves around the history and theory of architecture in its ecological, gendered, and colonial dimensions. This spring, she is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Architecture Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.