What Future?

Abstract

TO ASK ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE FIELD of Renaissance studies is, now, to ask whether it will have one, not because of any characteristics inherent to the field itself, but because we face the question of whether human beings and the ecologies we live and work in have a future. As I write, the temperature in southern France this week is expected to reach 457C (1137F). Unprecedented quantities of rain in the midwestern United States have made it impossible for farmers to get their crops into the ground. Extreme weather events are becoming ever more common, repeatedly taking a huge human and material toll. As a result—to name just one effect on our field—the Renaissance Society of America meeting was moved this year from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Toronto. As Renaissance scholars we cannot look away much longer, as rising sea levels threaten Venice and other historic sites. Meanwhile, drought renders other regions uninhabitable, and wars are fought over ever scarcer natural resources. I write this essay, therefore, not to suggest the best way to chase methodological trends, not to provide readers with an obligatory syllabus that you’ll have to race to keep up with in order to stay or become “cutting edge.”What we needmight actually be a little less of the cutting edge (it’s been suggested that a shorter work week would help slow carbon emissions). I write this essay as a plea: we need to be in climate crisis mode. That means we need to refashion our relationship to our work and systems of knowledge not only to reduce individual consumption of carbon fuels or to accommodate change as it