Please join editor and author John Allegrante and contributing authors in a panel discussion of their forthcoming book, Anxiety Culture: The New Global State of Human Affairs (Johns Hopkins University Press, November 12, 2024), a collection of timely essays on the rising wave of anxiety in culture.

“The twenty-first century is characterized by uncertainty: from catastrophic climate change to the accelerating pace of technological change, societies around the world are gripped by anxiety about the future. In Anxiety Culture, editors John Allegrante, Ulrich Hoinkes, Michael Schapira, and Karen Struve bring together a distinguished group of international scholars to examine the forces that increase anxiety as a phenomenon beyond solely individual experiences of clinical anxiety to pervade global culture.

These trenchant essays examine our culture of anxiety across diverse avenues of society. Covering fears related to climate change, populist and extremist movements around the world, gun violence, artificial intelligence, and more, contributors also examine how anxiety is expressed in literature and the media and how a culture of anxiety affects policymaking. Chapters are organized into five sections: disciplinary perspectives on anxiety, climate change and the environment, population health and social well-being, migration, and technology.”

— Publisher’s book description

Panelists:

John P. Allegrante is the inaugural Charles Irwin Lambert Professor of Health Behavior and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has been a member of the faculty since 1979, serving as department chair, deputy provost, and associate vice president for international affairs of the College. An applied behavioral scientist, Dr. Allegrante is the 2017 recipient of the Fries Foundation and CDC Foundation Elizabeth Fries Health Education Award for his contributions to the fields of behavioral science and health education as a researcher, academician, and ambassador. Dr. Allegrante will present an overview of the book project, its origins, and its landscape.

Nicholas Freudenberg is Distinguished Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences at the City University of New York School of Public Health and Faculty Director of Healthy CUNY, a university-wide effort to promote the health of CUNY students to support their academic success. Dr. Freudenberg is also Senior Faculty Fellow and co-founder of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. His recent books include, At What Cost Modern Capitalism and the Future of Health (Oxford, 2021) and Lethal but Legal Corporations, Consumption and Protecting Public Health (Oxford, 2014 and 2016). His chapter in Anxiety Culture is entitled, “A Public Health Perspective on Anxiety.”

Julie Mostov joined NYU in August 2017 as the first woman dean of Liberal Studies, bringing years of experience in global engagement, deep grounding in the liberal arts, and a commitment to interdisciplinary research and teaching. In addition to her many scholarly achievements, Dr. Mostov spearheaded a wide range of global initiatives and international research and academic partnerships for Drexel University as Senior Vice Provost of Global Initiatives and Professor of Politics and, earlier, as Director of International Area Studies and Women’s Studies. A political theorist, Dean Mostov is a well-known scholar on Southeastern Europe. Her chapter in Anxiety Culture is entitled, “Anxiety and Mobility/Immobility.”

Sonali Rajan is Professor of Health Education and Senior Associate Director of Research, Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME) at Teachers College, Columbia University, with a secondary faculty appointment in the Department of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She is a school violence prevention researcher who studies gun violence, school safety, and adverse childhood experiences. Her work prioritizes the needs for schools and communities to collectively attend to the well-being of children while keeping them safe, reducing their exposure to violence. Her chapter in Anxiety Culture is entitled, “Anxiety and School Gun Violence in America: Reimagining Solutions.”

The panel will be moderated by Tom James, Professor of History and Education and Program Director, History and Education, at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. James served as Provost, Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Teachers College for a dozen years and currently co-directs the Center for History and Education.

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Where: 305 Russell