CfP: Climate Havens: Humanistic Perspectives on Resilience, Migration, and Resources Symposium

As climate risks intensify, the idea of “climate havens”—and the identification of regions like the Great Lakes as more resilient to environmental change—raises pressing questions about space, belonging, justice, resources, and community. This symposium will explore climate havens through historical, philosophical, artistic, literary, and cultural perspectives, organized around three central themes:

1. What Is a Haven?
This theme invites scholars to explore the idea of a haven as a place of collective refuge and communal resilience in an increasingly unstable world. How have havens been imagined during times of crisis, migration, or disaster throughout history, literature, art, and philosophy? What does it mean for a place to serve as a haven not just for individuals, but for communities seeking belonging, healing, and safety? How do havens inspire new forms of care, kinship, and solidarity?

2. Whose Haven Is It?
This theme examines the ethical and social dimensions of climate havens. Who is able to seek refuge in climate-resilient regions—and who is excluded? How do race, gender, class, and histories of dispossession shape who is welcomed, who is displaced, and who gets to participate in defining community? What happens to existing communities when newcomers arrive? We invite papers that explore how places of refuge are negotiated, contested, and reconstituted in the face of migration, inequality, and climate-driven change.

3. Climate Havens and Natural Resources
This theme focuses on the role of ecosystems and natural resources in shaping climate havens, with special attention to regions like the Great Lakes. How can sustainable management of water, land, and other resources support the development of just and resilient communities? How might Indigenous, local, and historical knowledge guide community-based approaches to ecological care and governance? We invite contributions that address the balance between environmental sustainability, human experience, and resource management in climate-resilient areas.

We are particularly interested in papers focusing on the Great Lakes region and addressing (but not limited to) the following topics and themes:
- Historical perspectives on havens and migration, including climate migration
- Social and political dimensions of water resources
- Indigenous knowledge and stewardship
- Environmental ethics and justice
- Gendered perspectives on havens/climate havens
- Narratives of home, belonging, and displacement
- Urbanization, migration, and planning for climate havens
- Cultural and ecological loss in climate migration
- "Slow disaster" and its relationship to climate migration

The symposium will be held across two days, with day 1 convening at the University of Rochester and day 2 at the Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY)

We welcome submissions in the form of traditional papers as well as discussant-led interactive forums or guided conversations that engage with the proposed themes

Submission deadline: August 15 (applicants will be notified by September 30th)

Please submit your questions and papers to humanities@rochester.edu.

Selected papers will be considered for publication in an edited volume with the University of Rochester Press in the “Humanities in the World” Series https://www.sas.rochester.edu/humanities/programs/humanities-in-the-world.html

Presenters whose papers are selected for the symposium will receive small travel stipends, based on need; lodging and meals will be provided.

Contact Information
Tanya Bakhmetyeva, Ph.D.
Associate Director, Humanities Center
Professor of Instruction, Department of History
Professor, Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, University of Rochester
Co-editor, “The Humanities in the World” series, University of Rochester Press