LeCAIN

Exploring the New Material Humanism

What does it mean to be human? Today, our understanding of the human animal is radically shifting, and so too must our understanding of history and the other humanistic disciplines. Epigenetics, the New Materialism, Extended Cognition, and many other insights from both science and the humanities are now revealing how deeply embedded we are in the material world. Humans are best understood not in distinction to their material environments, but rather as emerging from our countless intimate connections with powerfully creative material things that surround us and are in some cases literally in us. Organisms, machines, buildings, and countless other artifacts--these are the non-human things that make us human. To begin exploring the exciting new possibilities offered by the New Material Humanism, you can begin with my 2017 book, The Matter of History, click on any of my current projects scrolling above, or take a look at some of my other publications and blog posts below.

Critical praise for The Matter of History: How Things Create the Past

A “profound and provocative book.”—Steven Lubar, Technology and Culture 59 (2018): 963-64.

“[The Matter of History] easily counts among the ten most fascinating books that I have read over the last decade.”—Stefan Berger, “Moving the Social,” Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements 62 (2019): 73–91.

A “fresh, provocative, and profound book… [The Matter of History] pushes environmental-history methodology to a new level of engagement with all actors of the material world.”—Anne Norton Greene, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 50 (2020): 435-36.

“The matter of history is a book rich in philosophical and historical insight…”—Joshua Specht, Journal of Global History 14 (2019): 145-50.

“The Matter of History constitutes the first successful attempt to create an historical narrative truly grounded in a non-anthropocentric ethos, both in terms of its theoretical premises and of its methodological choices.”—Caludio de Majo, Global Environment 12 (2019): 427-435.

"Writing History in the Time of COVID-19”

I offer a neo-materialist take on the COVID-19 crisis in this interview with Professor Stefan Hanß as part of his British Academy of Science project on Microscopic Records:

Writing History in the Time of COVID-19