This Oakley Center Symposium offered multiple perspectives on how posthumanist thought is reshaping fields as disparate as history, ethics, primatology, and literary studies. Some participants documented how our engagement with machines or non-human species changes our inner life in profound ways. Others considered the "transhumanism" notion that pharmaceuticals and prosthetic technologies will eventually transform us into beings who are no longer conventionally human. Together the participants attempted to identify key elements of posthumanist thought and share ideas about its impact on humanist thought and practiceAfter Humanism Symposium

Organizers

Michael F. Brown (Director, Oakley Center) and James L. Nolan, Jr. (Chair, Dept. of Anthropology & Sociology, Williams College)

Participants

• David Christian (History, Macquarie Univ.)
• Erik Davis (Independent scholar and journalist)
• Carl Elliott (Bioethics, Univ. of Minnesota)
• Sarah Franklin (Sociology and Bioethics, LSE)
• Geoffrey G. Harpham (Director, National Humanities Center)
• N. Katherine Hayles (English, Duke)
• Barbara J. King (Anthropology, William & Mary)
• Richard Sennett (Sociology, LSE and NYU)
• Sarah Whatmore (Geography, Univ. of Oxford)
• Cary Wolfe (English, Rice)
• Michael E. Zimmerman (Director, Center for Humanities & Arts, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder)