Our slow seminar will meet on Thursday 5 February to read Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.  I’m particularly looking forward to discussing this book as the beginning of an extension of AURA’s projects to include questions of the global fields and networks of species and species interactions.  Elizabeth Kolbert is an accomplished science writer; the book is beautifully written and a pleasure to read, despite the fact that it offers thought-provoking bad news about our planet.  I will not be picking out specific chapters; the book is an easy read, and I hope you will read as much as you can.  (The book can be ordered through www.abebooks.com)

Biologists: This book tells of the long history of speciation and the extraordinary pace of contemporary extinction.  This is a chance for you to help the social scientists, humanists, and artists in the group to think about the problems of the Anthropocene, and I hope you will come to help us discuss these problems.

Non-biologists: This is a great chance for us to think together, using our knowledge of globalization, about life on a multispecies earth. 

There will be dinner after the seminar. Everybody is welcome to participate.