Ecological Thought In German Literature And Culture

This volume surveys the contribution of German literature and culture to the evolution of ecological thought from the age of Goethe to the present. In a broad spectrum of essays from different periods, disciplines, and genres, it conveys both the uniqueness and the transnational significance of German ecological thought.

Defined as an ecological epoch in which humans have the most impact on the environment, the Anthropocene poses challenging questions to literary and cultural studies. If, in the Anthropocene, the distinction between nature and culture increasingly collapses, we have to rethink our division between historiography and natural history, as well as notions of the subject and of agency since the Enlightenment. This anthology collects papers from literary and cultural studies that address various issues surrounding the topic. Even though the new epoch seems to require a collective self-understanding as a unified species, readings of the Anthropocene and conceptualizations of human-nature relationships largely differ in Anglophone literatures and cultures. These differing perspectives are reflected in the structure of this book, which is divided into five separate sections: the introductory part familiarizes the reader with the concept and the challenges it poses for the humanities in general and for literary and cultural studies in particular, and the three following sections combine broader, more theoretical, essays with in-depth critical readings of US, Canadian, and Australian representations of the Anthropocene in literature. The final part moves beyond literature to include media theoretical perspectives and discussions of photography and cinema in the Anthropocene.

The Anglia Book Series (ANGB) offers a selection of high quality work on all areas and aspects of English philology. It publishes book-length studies and essay collections on English language and linguistics, on English and American literature and culture from the Middle Ages to the present, on the new English literatures, as well as on general and comparative literary studies, including aspects of cultural and literary theory.

This interdisciplinary volume discusses whether the increasing salience of the Anthropocene concept in the humanities and the social sciences constitutes an "Anthropocenic turn." The Anthropocene discourse creates novel conceptual configurations and enables scholars to re-negotiate and re-contextualize long-established paradigms, premises, theories and methodologies. These innovative constellations stimulate fresh research in many areas of thought and practice. The contributors to this volume respond to the proposition of an "Anthropocene turn" from the perspective of diverse research fields, including history of science, philosophy, environmental humanities and political science as well as literary, art and media studies. Altogether, the collection reveals to which extent the Anthropocene concept challenges deep-seated assumptions across disciplines. It invites readers to explore the wealth of scholarly perspectives on the Anthropocene as well as unexpected inter- and transdisciplinary connections.

This book introduces the notion of "educational ecology" as a necessary and promising pedagogic principle for the teaching of Anglophone literatures and cultures in a time of climate change. Drawing on scholarship in the environmental humanities and practice-oriented research in education and literature pedagogy, chapters address the challenges of climate change and the demand for sustainability and environmental pedagogy from the specific perspective of literary and cultural studies and education, arguing that these perspectives constitute a crucial element of the transdisciplinary effort of "cultivating sustainability." The notion of an "educational ecology" takes full advantage of the necessarily dialogic and co-constitutive nature of sustainability-related pedagogical philosophy and practice while it retains the subject-specific focus of research and education in the humanities, centring on and excelling in critical thinking, perspective diversity, language and discourse awareness, and the literary and cultural constructions of meaning. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of language, literature and culture pedagogy, as well as transdisciplinary researchers in the environmental humanities.

The complex nexus between masculinity and national identity has long troubled, but also fascinated the German cultural imagination. This has become apparent again since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the turn of the millennium when transnational developments have noticeably shaped Germany’s self-perception as a nation. This book examines the social and political impact of transnationalism with reference to current discourses of masculinity in novels by five contemporary male German-language authors. Specifically, it analyses how conceptions of the masculine interact with those of nationality, ethnicity, and otherness in the selected texts and assesses the new masculinities that result from those interactions. Exploring how local discourses of masculinity become part of transnational contexts in contemporary writing, the book moves a consideration of masculinities from a "native" into a transnational sphere.

Bringing together scholarly research by climate experts working in different locations and social science disciplines, this book offers insights into how climate change is socially and culturally constructed. Whereas existing studies of climate cultural differences are predominantly rooted in a static understanding of culture, cultural globalization theory suggests that new formations emerge dynamically at different social and spatial scales. This volume gathers analyses of climate cultural formations within various spaces and regions in the United States and the European Union. It focuses particularly on the emergence of new social movements and coalitions devoted to fighting climate change on both sides of the Atlantic. Overall, Climate Cultures in Europe and North America provides empirical and theoretical findings that contribute to current debates on globalization, conflict and governance, as well as cultural and social change. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental policy and politics, environmental sociology, and cultural studies.