HTC Graduate Colloquium: UNCERTAINTY

HTC Graduate Colloquium: UNCERTAINTY

March 14-15, 2025 

Uncertainty inflects knowledge and its conditions of production. Risk governs decision making. Indeterminacy conditions arguments. Though we like to think that the past structures the future, so too does indeterminacy, change and the unexpected. Might, therefore, uncertainty, instead of being an invisible after-effect in epistemological equations, become a central mode of critical engagement? 

As part of the 50th anniversary of the program in History, Theory, and Criticism (HTC) at the MIT School of Architecture + Planning, HTC graduate students convened emerging and established scholars in the history of architecture, art, and allied fields for a collective exploration of uncertainty. The organizers sought to probe what uncertainty makes possible in historical work, what it hinders and obfuscates, and what the program’s stated methodological commitments – history, theory, and criticism – can offer to both individuals and fields navigating uncertainty going forward. 

To this end, the two-day event showcased the exciting research of 19 emerging scholars considering uncertainty as a historic thematic or methodological condition in their work across diverse geographies and temporalities. The event’s experimental “Uncertainty Roundtable,” in turn, offered a forum for all attendees to creatively and collaboratively imagine the next 50 years – an urgent endeavor considering compounding pressures of unfolding environmental, humanitarian, and political crises in addition to increased scrutiny of the “value” of the humanities – indeed, research writ large – within universities.   

https://sites.mit.edu/htcuncertainty2025/schedule/ (March 14-15,2025)

 This event was made possible through the sponsorship of The School of Architecture and Planning, The Department of Architecture and from the Graduate Student Council’s Initiative Fund.