Human survival depends upon the ability to imagine a future that does not exist. Yet, experience constrains our expectations and what we believe is possible and desirable. If what we know grounds our perception of the natural world, how do we think our way to the world we hope to live in? And how is scientific investigation informed, for better or for worse, by the cultural stories that we tell? This cluster explores past and present imaginative possibilities, from materials to the environment and from medicalized to racialized identities. It interrogates how science both expands and limits what we can imagine, and how imagining has long fed the scientific pursuits that show us the futures we want.
This cluster will be offered throughout 2024-26.
