's international bestseller, Wolf Totem (Chinese original 2004, English translation 2009) is, lik... more 's international bestseller, Wolf Totem (Chinese original 2004, English translation 2009) is, like a number of other earlier narratives concerned with wolves which will also be discussed briefly in the following, of interest from both an ecopoetic and a zoopoetic perspective. On the one hand, the novel can be read as an ecological Bildungsroman, recounting the protagonist's progression from fear of wolves and desire to exterminate them to appreciation of the part they play in maintaining the ecological balance in the grassland steppes of the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia. Engaging creatively and critically with the environmental challenges facing life on earth, and participating in the ongoing process of defining their ethical implications, it is patently of interest to ecocritics. 1 Although the formal structures and techniques in Wolf Totem are neither complex nor particularly innovative, the novel is also an appropriate object for ecopoetic study, inasmuch as it depicts ecological systems and processes including the human relationship with the natural environment in narratives, images, tropes and formal structures drawn from and adapting cultural tradition. 2 1 The novel has been the subject of three articles alone in ISLE, the flagship journal of studies in literature and environment: Cf. Varsava, He, and Hong. 2 While the term "ecopoetics" has been most often used for the analysis and theorizing of forms of poetry, it is equally applicable to prose fiction such as Jiang Rong's, nonfiction, drama, and indeed to cinema and art. Jonathan Skinner chose Ecopoetics as the name for the literary magazine which he edited 2001-2007, publishing avant-garde work that was "dedicated to exploring creative-critical edges between writing (with an emphasis on poetry) and ecology (the theory and praxis of deliberate earthlings)". (The programmatic statement is repeated in the front matter of each issue.) Skinner has written since, in a blog entitled "What is ecopoetics?": "For some readers, ecopoetics is the making and study of pastoral poetry, or poetry of wilderness and deep ecology…. For others, it is … not a matter of theme, but of how certain poetic methods model ecological processes like complexity, non-linearity, feedback loops, and recycling…. Rather than locate a 'kind' of writing as 'ecopoetic', it may be more helpful to … shift the focus from themes to topoi, tropes and entropologies, to institutional critique of 'green' discourse itself, and to an ar-brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
This volume expounds fruitful ways of analysing matters of ecology, environments, nature, and the... more This volume expounds fruitful ways of analysing matters of ecology, environments, nature, and the non-human world in a broad spectrum of material in French. Scholars from Canada, France, Great Britain, Spain, and the United States outline new directions for French ecocriticism by exploring a variety of aesthetic, literary, socio-historical, and ethical questions:
Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2019
This collection of essays is an output of the UK research project 'Stories of Change: Energy in t... more This collection of essays is an output of the UK research project 'Stories of Change: Energy in the Past, Present and Future'. 1 Its principal aim is to explore the insights which narratives, literary and non-fiction, afford into the processes and consequences of energy generation and consumption, and energy system change, and to consider what implications such insights may have for the transition to renewable energy. At the same time, the special number was conceived as a test of the ability of narrative to serve as a focus for interdisciplinary work in the environmental humanities. 2 'Stories of Change' was an interdisciplinary research project focused on humanity's changing relationship with energy in the past, present and future, whose ultimate ambition it was to provide a more plural and imaginative account of our present and future energy choices. 3 The project drew on stories as a central concept because of their importance in responding to the urgent and difficult problems of climate change and the associated challenges of our energy system, the scale of which are not currently reflected in the public and political responses. Telling stories possesses an important consciousness-enhancing function for the subject as well as the reader, and has a part to play in public debates on the environment and energy. 4 Working through areas of current concern with hitherto marginalised actors and exploring elements of a collective vision for the future, 'Stories of Change' sought to encourage individuals and communities to think about the role of energy in their lives and the necessity for change. (See the project's online collection of oral stories at <storiesofchange.ac.uk>.) This issue of Resilience is concerned solely with written narratives; nonetheless it draws on the 'Stories of Change' project's use of 'story' as a device around which different disciplines-literature, history, design, geography, social and policy research-and methodologies-digital storytelling, oral history, creative practice-could be gathered. 5 Narrative in Environmental Humanities Environmental Humanities has emerged in the 21 st century as a vibrant interdisciplinary field of research addressing the social and cultural dimensions of pressing contemporary socio-environmental problems, including resource depletion, environmental injustice,
Ecozon@ [Ecozona]: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, 2020
Interest in ecocriticism has witnessed rapid growth over the past decade: it has established itse... more Interest in ecocriticism has witnessed rapid growth over the past decade: it has established itself worldwide as an important branch of literary and cultural criticism, and entered into fruitful interdisciplinary collaborations with other disciplines under the umbrella of the environmental humanities. Ecozon@ has played a part in this development in the European context. The articles we present in this tenth anniversary issue revisit questions raised in the journal's opening number, and touched on periodically in subsequent issues, concerning the state of ecocriticism in Europe, and the future of ecocriticism in general. As in our first issue, we invited leading theorists and practitioners to contribute short essays reviewing the development of ecocriticism in their region or field and indicating possible future directions. We are hugely grateful for their willingness to accept the challenge of surveying what was often uncharted territory and drawing conclusions within a limit of 3000 words. European ecocritics typically face in two directions, seeking to introduce scholars and the public in non-English-speaking countries to ecocritical concepts and debates, while offering analyses of exemplary works from their own culture for an international readership. Ecocritics in Europe have been inspired by the foundational American theorists and practitioners, and have drawn extensively on their concepts and arguments. Individual American scholars have also played an influential role in internationalising ecocriticism: Scott Slovic in particular, editor of ISLE (1995-2020), has worked tirelessly to promote ecocritical approaches to literature and culture across Europe and elsewhere, and served as mentor for a generation of European scholars. However, European ecocriticism is at the same time defined by its opposition to American landscapes and values. Inhabited cultural landscapes substitute for wilderness as an ideal, and critical practice has been described (by Peter Barry) as possessing an
Although global warming has been a topic of American and British popular fiction since the 1980s,... more Although global warming has been a topic of American and British popular fiction since the 1980s, its literary representation has only recently become an object of academic enquiry. Perhaps a score of German novels on the subject have also appeared, and critical analysis of these is now called for. Following a general outline of the socio-political, philosophical, and ethical issues which climate change raises, and of the particular aesthetic challenges which writing about global warming poses, Ilija Trojanow's EisTau (Melting Ice, 2011) serves as a basis for discussion of the tensions between confessional and didactic impulses on the one hand, and recognition of the need for an aesthetic facilitating detachment on the other.
If any single German writer comes close to the importance which Henry David Thoreau possesses in ... more If any single German writer comes close to the importance which Henry David Thoreau possesses in American culture as principal founder of the national ‘environmental imagination’ (Lawrence Buell), it is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Goethe’s standing as the greatest German writer in modern times is undisputed, and nature has been central to public interest in his work: “Nature is the concept which stood at the very centre of Goethe interpretation from the very beginning and still does today”, writes Karl Robert Mandelkow.1 On the basis of his poems, novels, plays and essays, he was already understood by his friend and collaborator Schiller, together with his Romantic contemporaries, as an advocate of nature and a poet of sensual perception. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, the conception of nature expounded in his voluminous scientific studies has also been a matter of constant debate and served repeatedly as a source of inspiration. Arguments based on Goethe have been at the heart of an ‘alternative’ German discourse on nature and environment over the past century and a half, and Goethe’s influence on the literature of nature in Germany is greater than that of any other writer.
Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2019
This collection of essays is an output of the UK research project 'Stories of Change: Energy in t... more This collection of essays is an output of the UK research project 'Stories of Change: Energy in the Past, Present and Future'. 1 Its principal aim is to explore the insights which narratives, literary and non-fiction, afford into the processes and consequences of energy generation and consumption, and energy system change, and to consider what implications such insights may have for the transition to renewable energy. At the same time, the special number was conceived as a test of the ability of narrative to serve as a focus for interdisciplinary work in the environmental humanities. 2 'Stories of Change' was an interdisciplinary research project focused on humanity's changing relationship with energy in the past, present and future, whose ultimate ambition it was to provide a more plural and imaginative account of our present and future energy choices. 3 The project drew on stories as a central concept because of their importance in responding to the urgent and difficult problems of climate change and the associated challenges of our energy system, the scale of which are not currently reflected in the public and political responses. Telling stories possesses an important consciousness-enhancing function for the subject as well as the reader, and has a part to play in public debates on the environment and energy. 4 Working through areas of current concern with hitherto marginalised actors and exploring elements of a collective vision for the future, 'Stories of Change' sought to encourage individuals and communities to think about the role of energy in their lives and the necessity for change. (See the project's online collection of oral stories at <storiesofchange.ac.uk>.) This issue of Resilience is concerned solely with written narratives; nonetheless it draws on the 'Stories of Change' project's use of 'story' as a device around which different disciplines-literature, history, design, geography, social and policy research-and methodologies-digital storytelling, oral history, creative practice-could be gathered. 5 Narrative in Environmental Humanities Environmental Humanities has emerged in the 21 st century as a vibrant interdisciplinary field of research addressing the social and cultural dimensions of pressing contemporary socio-environmental problems, including resource depletion, environmental injustice,
Rettig’s interest is not primarily in the success of the instruction, but more in interspecies re... more Rettig’s interest is not primarily in the success of the instruction, but more in interspecies relationality, in this case the forms of embodied empathy that develop as two bodies synchronize with one another in action. The third and final section, “Empathie und ihre Relevanz in exemplarischen gesellschaftlichen Kommunikationsbereichen,” features case studies of communicative contexts in which empathy plays a key role: the justice system (Ekkehard Felder and coauthors), doctor-patient relationships (Pavla Schäfer), academic communication (Michael Bender and Nina Janich), the political arena (Josef Klein), public relations (Helmut Ebert and Edith Münch), education (Jörg Killian and Konstanze Marx), reading fictional texts (Berbeli Wanning and Anna Mattfeldt), lay linguistic discourses (Kristin Kuck and Kersten Sven Roth), and the professional art world (Paul Reszke). This wide array of studies also comes with a broad spectrum of understandings of language. The first contribution from Felder et al. is representative of this; this one chapter offers twelve different ways of thinking about language in juridical contexts, each authored by a different co-author. Sprache und Empathie offers a fairly comprehensive overview of the range of issues and perspectives related to this field. Because of the breadth of the collection in terms of scope and disciplinary positioning and the lack of editorial commentary or guidance beyond the introduction, Sprache und Empathie has an encyclopedic structure. Many readers would likely be interested in select chapters, rather than the volume as a whole. At the same time, there are some focal areas that are absent or mentioned only in passing, which might be missed by scholars in German Studies. For example, with the exception of a few brief references, questions of race, gender, and sexuality are not taken into account, in spite of the recurring focus on selective empathy and the understanding that it is socially and culturally constituted. Overall, though, the volume is a useful resource for scholars working in or just starting to think about language and empathy.
's international bestseller, Wolf Totem (Chinese original 2004, English translation 2009) is, lik... more 's international bestseller, Wolf Totem (Chinese original 2004, English translation 2009) is, like a number of other earlier narratives concerned with wolves which will also be discussed briefly in the following, of interest from both an ecopoetic and a zoopoetic perspective. On the one hand, the novel can be read as an ecological Bildungsroman, recounting the protagonist's progression from fear of wolves and desire to exterminate them to appreciation of the part they play in maintaining the ecological balance in the grassland steppes of the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia. Engaging creatively and critically with the environmental challenges facing life on earth, and participating in the ongoing process of defining their ethical implications, it is patently of interest to ecocritics. 1 Although the formal structures and techniques in Wolf Totem are neither complex nor particularly innovative, the novel is also an appropriate object for ecopoetic study, inasmuch as it depicts ecological systems and processes including the human relationship with the natural environment in narratives, images, tropes and formal structures drawn from and adapting cultural tradition. 2 1 The novel has been the subject of three articles alone in ISLE, the flagship journal of studies in literature and environment: Cf. Varsava, He, and Hong. 2 While the term "ecopoetics" has been most often used for the analysis and theorizing of forms of poetry, it is equally applicable to prose fiction such as Jiang Rong's, nonfiction, drama, and indeed to cinema and art. Jonathan Skinner chose Ecopoetics as the name for the literary magazine which he edited 2001-2007, publishing avant-garde work that was "dedicated to exploring creative-critical edges between writing (with an emphasis on poetry) and ecology (the theory and praxis of deliberate earthlings)". (The programmatic statement is repeated in the front matter of each issue.) Skinner has written since, in a blog entitled "What is ecopoetics?": "For some readers, ecopoetics is the making and study of pastoral poetry, or poetry of wilderness and deep ecology…. For others, it is … not a matter of theme, but of how certain poetic methods model ecological processes like complexity, non-linearity, feedback loops, and recycling…. Rather than locate a 'kind' of writing as 'ecopoetic', it may be more helpful to … shift the focus from themes to topoi, tropes and entropologies, to institutional critique of 'green' discourse itself, and to an ar-brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
This volume expounds fruitful ways of analysing matters of ecology, environments, nature, and the... more This volume expounds fruitful ways of analysing matters of ecology, environments, nature, and the non-human world in a broad spectrum of material in French. Scholars from Canada, France, Great Britain, Spain, and the United States outline new directions for French ecocriticism by exploring a variety of aesthetic, literary, socio-historical, and ethical questions:
Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2019
This collection of essays is an output of the UK research project 'Stories of Change: Energy in t... more This collection of essays is an output of the UK research project 'Stories of Change: Energy in the Past, Present and Future'. 1 Its principal aim is to explore the insights which narratives, literary and non-fiction, afford into the processes and consequences of energy generation and consumption, and energy system change, and to consider what implications such insights may have for the transition to renewable energy. At the same time, the special number was conceived as a test of the ability of narrative to serve as a focus for interdisciplinary work in the environmental humanities. 2 'Stories of Change' was an interdisciplinary research project focused on humanity's changing relationship with energy in the past, present and future, whose ultimate ambition it was to provide a more plural and imaginative account of our present and future energy choices. 3 The project drew on stories as a central concept because of their importance in responding to the urgent and difficult problems of climate change and the associated challenges of our energy system, the scale of which are not currently reflected in the public and political responses. Telling stories possesses an important consciousness-enhancing function for the subject as well as the reader, and has a part to play in public debates on the environment and energy. 4 Working through areas of current concern with hitherto marginalised actors and exploring elements of a collective vision for the future, 'Stories of Change' sought to encourage individuals and communities to think about the role of energy in their lives and the necessity for change. (See the project's online collection of oral stories at <storiesofchange.ac.uk>.) This issue of Resilience is concerned solely with written narratives; nonetheless it draws on the 'Stories of Change' project's use of 'story' as a device around which different disciplines-literature, history, design, geography, social and policy research-and methodologies-digital storytelling, oral history, creative practice-could be gathered. 5 Narrative in Environmental Humanities Environmental Humanities has emerged in the 21 st century as a vibrant interdisciplinary field of research addressing the social and cultural dimensions of pressing contemporary socio-environmental problems, including resource depletion, environmental injustice,
Ecozon@ [Ecozona]: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, 2020
Interest in ecocriticism has witnessed rapid growth over the past decade: it has established itse... more Interest in ecocriticism has witnessed rapid growth over the past decade: it has established itself worldwide as an important branch of literary and cultural criticism, and entered into fruitful interdisciplinary collaborations with other disciplines under the umbrella of the environmental humanities. Ecozon@ has played a part in this development in the European context. The articles we present in this tenth anniversary issue revisit questions raised in the journal's opening number, and touched on periodically in subsequent issues, concerning the state of ecocriticism in Europe, and the future of ecocriticism in general. As in our first issue, we invited leading theorists and practitioners to contribute short essays reviewing the development of ecocriticism in their region or field and indicating possible future directions. We are hugely grateful for their willingness to accept the challenge of surveying what was often uncharted territory and drawing conclusions within a limit of 3000 words. European ecocritics typically face in two directions, seeking to introduce scholars and the public in non-English-speaking countries to ecocritical concepts and debates, while offering analyses of exemplary works from their own culture for an international readership. Ecocritics in Europe have been inspired by the foundational American theorists and practitioners, and have drawn extensively on their concepts and arguments. Individual American scholars have also played an influential role in internationalising ecocriticism: Scott Slovic in particular, editor of ISLE (1995-2020), has worked tirelessly to promote ecocritical approaches to literature and culture across Europe and elsewhere, and served as mentor for a generation of European scholars. However, European ecocriticism is at the same time defined by its opposition to American landscapes and values. Inhabited cultural landscapes substitute for wilderness as an ideal, and critical practice has been described (by Peter Barry) as possessing an
Although global warming has been a topic of American and British popular fiction since the 1980s,... more Although global warming has been a topic of American and British popular fiction since the 1980s, its literary representation has only recently become an object of academic enquiry. Perhaps a score of German novels on the subject have also appeared, and critical analysis of these is now called for. Following a general outline of the socio-political, philosophical, and ethical issues which climate change raises, and of the particular aesthetic challenges which writing about global warming poses, Ilija Trojanow's EisTau (Melting Ice, 2011) serves as a basis for discussion of the tensions between confessional and didactic impulses on the one hand, and recognition of the need for an aesthetic facilitating detachment on the other.
If any single German writer comes close to the importance which Henry David Thoreau possesses in ... more If any single German writer comes close to the importance which Henry David Thoreau possesses in American culture as principal founder of the national ‘environmental imagination’ (Lawrence Buell), it is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Goethe’s standing as the greatest German writer in modern times is undisputed, and nature has been central to public interest in his work: “Nature is the concept which stood at the very centre of Goethe interpretation from the very beginning and still does today”, writes Karl Robert Mandelkow.1 On the basis of his poems, novels, plays and essays, he was already understood by his friend and collaborator Schiller, together with his Romantic contemporaries, as an advocate of nature and a poet of sensual perception. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, the conception of nature expounded in his voluminous scientific studies has also been a matter of constant debate and served repeatedly as a source of inspiration. Arguments based on Goethe have been at the heart of an ‘alternative’ German discourse on nature and environment over the past century and a half, and Goethe’s influence on the literature of nature in Germany is greater than that of any other writer.
Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2019
This collection of essays is an output of the UK research project 'Stories of Change: Energy in t... more This collection of essays is an output of the UK research project 'Stories of Change: Energy in the Past, Present and Future'. 1 Its principal aim is to explore the insights which narratives, literary and non-fiction, afford into the processes and consequences of energy generation and consumption, and energy system change, and to consider what implications such insights may have for the transition to renewable energy. At the same time, the special number was conceived as a test of the ability of narrative to serve as a focus for interdisciplinary work in the environmental humanities. 2 'Stories of Change' was an interdisciplinary research project focused on humanity's changing relationship with energy in the past, present and future, whose ultimate ambition it was to provide a more plural and imaginative account of our present and future energy choices. 3 The project drew on stories as a central concept because of their importance in responding to the urgent and difficult problems of climate change and the associated challenges of our energy system, the scale of which are not currently reflected in the public and political responses. Telling stories possesses an important consciousness-enhancing function for the subject as well as the reader, and has a part to play in public debates on the environment and energy. 4 Working through areas of current concern with hitherto marginalised actors and exploring elements of a collective vision for the future, 'Stories of Change' sought to encourage individuals and communities to think about the role of energy in their lives and the necessity for change. (See the project's online collection of oral stories at <storiesofchange.ac.uk>.) This issue of Resilience is concerned solely with written narratives; nonetheless it draws on the 'Stories of Change' project's use of 'story' as a device around which different disciplines-literature, history, design, geography, social and policy research-and methodologies-digital storytelling, oral history, creative practice-could be gathered. 5 Narrative in Environmental Humanities Environmental Humanities has emerged in the 21 st century as a vibrant interdisciplinary field of research addressing the social and cultural dimensions of pressing contemporary socio-environmental problems, including resource depletion, environmental injustice,
Rettig’s interest is not primarily in the success of the instruction, but more in interspecies re... more Rettig’s interest is not primarily in the success of the instruction, but more in interspecies relationality, in this case the forms of embodied empathy that develop as two bodies synchronize with one another in action. The third and final section, “Empathie und ihre Relevanz in exemplarischen gesellschaftlichen Kommunikationsbereichen,” features case studies of communicative contexts in which empathy plays a key role: the justice system (Ekkehard Felder and coauthors), doctor-patient relationships (Pavla Schäfer), academic communication (Michael Bender and Nina Janich), the political arena (Josef Klein), public relations (Helmut Ebert and Edith Münch), education (Jörg Killian and Konstanze Marx), reading fictional texts (Berbeli Wanning and Anna Mattfeldt), lay linguistic discourses (Kristin Kuck and Kersten Sven Roth), and the professional art world (Paul Reszke). This wide array of studies also comes with a broad spectrum of understandings of language. The first contribution from Felder et al. is representative of this; this one chapter offers twelve different ways of thinking about language in juridical contexts, each authored by a different co-author. Sprache und Empathie offers a fairly comprehensive overview of the range of issues and perspectives related to this field. Because of the breadth of the collection in terms of scope and disciplinary positioning and the lack of editorial commentary or guidance beyond the introduction, Sprache und Empathie has an encyclopedic structure. Many readers would likely be interested in select chapters, rather than the volume as a whole. At the same time, there are some focal areas that are absent or mentioned only in passing, which might be missed by scholars in German Studies. For example, with the exception of a few brief references, questions of race, gender, and sexuality are not taken into account, in spite of the recurring focus on selective empathy and the understanding that it is socially and culturally constituted. Overall, though, the volume is a useful resource for scholars working in or just starting to think about language and empathy.
This paper explores the creative uses of stories and storytelling to engage groups and individual... more This paper explores the creative uses of stories and storytelling to engage groups and individuals with consideration of changes in energy systems across time and place. It summarises three story-based experiments that responded to the theme of 'energy utopias'. These are drawn from the three core strands of a much wider body of work undertaken within the Stories of Change project. This took stories as a central motif and organising device to refresh public and political conversations about energy and decarbonisation. Our hypothesis was that stories could offer a popular and engaging route into thinking about the past and present of humanity's lives with energy and a lively way of imagining possible futures. We also wanted to test the degree to which stories could offer a shared intellectual space that might support both interdisciplinary and co-productive working for a core team that includes social science, humanities, media, computing and design researchers as well as creative and community partners. The paper considers some of the practical, methodological and theoretical considerations and reflects on the strengths and limitations of stories as both motif and technique in supporting action on climate change.
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