CAS Full Professor Lecture Series

"Taking on the Heat in the ‘Burbs of Paris" ft. Meaghan Emery in the School of World Languages and Cultures

Wednesday, March 18, 2026 @ 4:30pm in Waterman Memorial Lounge

Thanks to a Fulbright US Scholar award (2024-2025), I began an environmental research project on the active transition to resilient communities, including in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. In this urban center, characterized by dense, concrete housing, temperatures can soar over 10 degrees Celsius (50˚F) higher than in the rural countryside due to the absorption and radiation of heat from the built surfaces. By studying how the philosophy of freedom is being reconciled with the needed change in habits and urban design, I am seeking ways to bridge my research (and the Humanities more broadly) with the environmental sciences through eco-philosophy.

Meaghan Emery joined the French program, now in the School of World Languages and Cultures, in 2002, after earning her PhD at the Ohio State University in 2001. At UVM, she has developed courses with a particular focus on the Second World War and intellectual resistance and collaboration, the period of decolonization, and contemporary migration. Her research into the philosophy of Albert Camus and the paradigm of resistance vs. revolution has opened her up to its potential to bring about social change, including today in the face of ecological collapse, undoubtedly the greatest crisis we will have undergone as a species.