Join experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats for a free hour-and-a-half walk and workshop focused on Keats’ conceptualization of the Common Law of Nature:

All life on Earth lives within the biosphere, conventionally described in terms of animals and plants. The biosphere can alternatively be understood as a living system of planetary governance in which all life participates. Since the Industrial Revolution, our species has sought to secede. Ignoring mechanisms of self-organization that evolved over the past 3.7 billion years, we have unilaterally imposed our own rules on all other creatures. In order to live beyond the Anthropocene, we need to rediscover the underlying legal system of the biosphere. We need to regain literacy in the common law of nature. 

In this hour-and-a-half walk and workshop, participants will seek wisdom from species of the Sonoran Desert, ranging from kangaroo rats to mesquite trees. The workshop will begin with coffee and pastries at the Poetry Center before we depart on a walk through the University of Arizona campus northeast of the Poetry Center. During the walk, participants will share observations about nonhuman lifeways. At the end of the walk, we’ll gather to create and share broadsides that translate these readings from nature into forms legible to people, fostering new approaches to law, politics, and society. Be prepared for a half-mile to one mile walk.

Join us following Reading the Common Law of Nature for a day-long symposium: Environmental Humanities in Common on Tumamoc Hill. This event—hosted by the U of A English Department’s Reading Initiative, Biosphere2, and the Environmental Humanities Collaborative—is also free and open to the public with advance registration (form found here). The event invites readings and responses to The Common Law of Nature project, commonality and “commons” from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and will feature responses by artists, writers, and scientists, including Ron Broglio, author of Animal Revolution, and Erika Lynne Hanson, an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes Future Ecologies and Life on Mars.