Soil – Dirt – Earth: Ecologies below Ground, 1750–1850 // International Conference, 22-23 June 2023, University of Passau

Soil – Dirt – Earth: Ecologies below Ground, 1750–1850

22 – 24 June 2023, University of Passau

Organised by
Katharina Boehm (University of Passau)

Frederike Middelhoff (Goethe-University Frankfurt)
Paul Hamann-Rose (University of Passau)

John Clerk, “Unconformity at Jedburgh”, engraving incl. in James Hutton, Theory of the Earth (1795)

Location: ITZ Building, Seminar Room 017 (https://www.uni-passau.de/en/international/campustour/itz-building/; please open the link and scroll down for a map of the campus)

Wednesday, 21 June

19:00               Conference Warming, Restaurant Paulusbogen (Rindermarkt 2, 94032 Passau)

Thursday, 22 June

9:30                      Welcome and Introduction (Katharina Boehm, Paul Hamann-Rose, Frederike                                             Middelhoff)

10:00-11:00        Susan Oliver (Essex, UK): Life below Ground: James Hutton, Theories of the Earth,                  and Imagined Animals 

11:00-12:00        Timothy Attanucci (Mainz, GER): Earth as (Once) Living Environment: George                Cuvier’s Fossil Reconstructions

12:00-12:15        Coffee

12:15 -1315        Oliver Völker (Frankfurt, GER): “Travelled Materials”: Earth, Soil, and                                             Economic Productivity in Hutton and Lyell

13:15                   Lunch

14:30-15:30        Philipp Erchinger (Düsseldorf, GER): Grave Culture: Wordsworth’s                                                   Groundwork 

15:30-16:30        Will Abberley (Sussex, UK): Geological Raptures and Spiritual Sustainability                                             in Hugh Miller’s The Old Red Sandstone

16:30-17:00        Coffee

17:00-18:00      Mira Shah (Bern, CH/Frankfurt, GER): “Testimony of the Soil”: Archaeological                Ecologies and the Discovery of Human Prehistory

20:00               Dinner

Friday, 23rd June

10:00-11:00        Tess Somervell (Oxford, UK): Earth’s Histories and Futures in Jago’s                                                 Edge-Hill

11:00-12:00       Mary-Ann Constantine (Cardiff, UK): Gashes in the Landscape: Mines,                                             Quarries and Peatlands in Romantic-Era Tours of Britain

12:00-13:00        Lunch

13:30-14:30        Jim Scown (Cardiff, UK): Science, Poetry, and the “Celestial Soil” of                                                 Romantic Ecology 

14:30-15:30       Jos Smith (Norwich, UK): “Stories of the Soil”: Contemporary Nature                                                Writing’s Romantic Moderns

15:30                 Closing remarks / Coffee

16:00-18:00        City Tour

20:00               Dinner