Social critic and journalist James Howard Kunstler to present Humanities Symposium keynote Feb. 20 Journalist and social critic James Howard Kunstler will present “The Long Emergency and the Destiny of Cities,” the keynote address of Loyola College in Maryland’s 2007 Humanities Symposium, on Tuesday, Feb. 20. The address is scheduled for 7 p.m. in McManus Theatre on the College’s North Charles Street campus. Kunstler will tie his remarks to the Symposium’s theme, “Urban Spaces, Urban Voices,” and its core text, Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, considered a classic in the fields of city planning and urban architecture. His address will also raise some of the arguments made in his most recent book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century, a book focused on the oil crisis and the importance of the new urbanism. Kunstler’s other books include The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition; Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century and two novels. He often addresses environmental and economic issues in such publications as The Atlantic, Slate.com and The New York Times Magazine and frequently lectures on urban design, the oil crisis, New Urbanism and new economies. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Brockport. Like many other events and activities planned at the College this academic year, the Humanities Symposium, an annual program intended to draw students and faculty from many disciplines together to consider a common text, was inspired in part by the College’s Year of the City initiative, designed to reaffirm Loyola’s relationship with the City of Baltimore and to consider the role the College, as a Catholic, Jesuit institution of higher education, should play in considering the challenges faced by the City today. | 
