'Ringing the Changes? Literary and Cultural Responses to the Anthropocene' (AGS 2020)

Ringing the Changes? Literary and Cultural Responses to the Anthropocene

Special panel at the annual conference of the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Swansea University, 2-4 September, 2020. 

Deadline: 3 April, 2020

The environmental challenge to our collective existence is both more urgent, and more intractable, than ever before. As ‘global heating’ looks likely to surpass 3C by the year 2100, the realities of life in the Anthropocene are asserting themselves with a speed and ferocity still inconceivable only a decade ago. While literary and cultural studies are undeniably central to a rethinking of our place in this mess, the scale and complexity of the transformations may, as such thinkers as Timothy Morton and Timothy Clark have warned, throw into doubt our existing approaches and resources.

This panel invites papers that both investigate and challenge German, German-language, and comparative responses to changing climates and environments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Contributions can be cultural or political; literary, filmic, or theoretical; and concerned with the very large, the very small, or anything in between. As ‘we’ are only one (if uniquely destructive) part of the picture, negotiations with animals and other non- and post-human beings are also warmly welcomed.

Proposals for papers (of no more than 20 minutes, and preferably in English) should be 150-200 words in length. Please send your proposal to the panel convenor, Robert Craig (University of Bamberg), at robert.craig@uni-bamberg.de, by 3 April, 2020.