Organizers: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Judith Rauscher (U of Cologne), Verena Wurth (U of Cologne), and Dr. Nora Castle (U of Bonn)

Description: In this workshop, we explored the intersections of feminist, gender, and queer studies with ecocritical approaches to popular culture, focusing specifically on speculative fiction. For this purpose, we invited an international group of scholars with backgrounds in American Studies, Anglophone Literatures, Gender and Queer Studies, Science Fiction and Utopian Studies as well as the Environmental Humanities to give short presentations on research projects related to the workshop topic.

Presentations:

1. Yıldız Aşar (University of Bamberg, Germany): “We are the daughters of Mega City”: Latinxfuturism, Girlhood and Environment in Dealing in Dreams

2. Lena Falk (University of Bonn): Queer Subjects, Humanity TBD: Posthumanism and Queer Embodiment in Contemporary Speculative Fiction 

3. Jade Arbo (Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Brazil): Speculative Ecologies: A Feminist Epistemology of/for Science Fiction

4. Sarah Lohmann (ETH Zurich, Switzerland): Feminist Cognition and Climate Fiction

Organizers: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Judith Rauscher (U of Cologne), Dr. Victoria Herche (U of Cologne), Verena Wurth (U of Cologne), in collaboration with the “Network for Energy and Literature”

Description: In this workshop, we ventured into the field of the Energy Humanities and discussed how different kinds of energy, the materials that hold and release them, and the infrastructures and institutions that distribute them are represented in American popular cultural products. In the process, we investigated how petroleum and other fossil fuels, nuclear power, and renewable energies shape narratives about social and ecological relations in different media and of different epochs.

Presentations:

1. Matthew Bicakci (U of Oregon): "Astrophage Ecocriticism: Biological Energy and Environmental Discourse in Contemporary Science Fiction"

2. Victoria Herche & David Kern (U of Cologne), Antonia Villinger (U of Erlangen-Nürnberg): Introducing the Network “Energy and Literature”

3. Kaleb Beavers (U of Oregon): "Microbial Energies: From Energy to Power in Fermentation

4. Verena Wurth (U of Cologne): “Energy, Complicity, Ecocrime”

5. Rachel DiNitto (U of Oregon): "Selling Nuclear Power and Amnesia: the Spectacle of HBO's Chernobyl"

6. Nora Castle (U of Warrick), Judith Rauscher & Burak Sezer (of Cologne): “Grit in the Machine: Multinational Institutions, Rogue Geoengineering, and the Future of Global Infrastructure in American Science Fiction”

Organizers: Dr. Stephen Rust (U of Oregon) and Verena Wurth (U of Cologne)

Description: In this workshop, we discussed the methods and affordances of ecomedia writing, focusing in particular on TV and Film Studies approaches to analyzing human-nonhuman entanglements on screen and the medium- as well as genre-specific concerns arising from teaching and writing about these entanglements in works as distinct as horror films and nature documentaries.

Presenters:

1. Katrina Maggiulli (U of Oregon)

2. Stephen Rust (U of Oregon) and Verena Wurth (U of Cologne)

March 16 & 17, 2021, via Zoom

Organizers: Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Wheeler (U of Oregon) & Jun.-Prof. Dr. Judith Rauscher (U of Cologne)
Participants: Scholars from the University of Oregon & the University of Cologne
Guests: Scholars from the Universities of Tübingen and Bamberg

Description

Bringing together researchers from Germany and the United States, this workshop invited participants to share their ideas about how to use American popular culture and cultural studies methodologies as a means to teach environmental as well as civic literacy in ways that are accessible to students of a variety of backgrounds. In our current moment of global crisis and political instability, efforts to promote environmental and civic literacy must be based on democratic principles of equality and justice. Teaching environmental cultural studies thus calls for a combination of environmental with disability, feminist, queer, and anti-racist pedagogies. It also demands thinking about as well as modelling critical diversity and inclusion in the classroom, especially when the students are future teachers and educators themselves.
As socially engaged critical practices, both American cultural studies and critical environmental pedagogies must respond to the many challenges that the current global environmental crisis poses to societies everywhere. At the same time, they must account for the many different shapes this crisis takes in different places due to historical and persistent social inequalities. By initiating a discussion between scholars from the United States and Germany whose research and teaching focuses on environmental issues and critical pedagogies, the workshop was organized to generate new ideas for critical environmental education, both in terms of a more diverse environmental cultural studies curriculum and site-specific/ transatlantic pedagogical practices.

Workshop Schedule

Tuesday, March 16: Local Practices

• 6.00-6.30 p.m. Introductions (Betsy Wheeler & Judith Rauscher)
  • Who we are/ Where we are
• 6.30-7.00: Presentations + Discussion
  • Stephen Rust (U of Oregon) “Using Popular Media and Site-based Learning to Reimagine Ecoliteracy”
  • Manuel Geßner & Youssef Mahfouz (U of Cologne): “One school, one book - Teaching Environmental Awareness through The Lorax by Dr. Seuss” (student project)
• • Verena Wurth (U of Cologne): “Serial Ecologies of New Golden Age Television: Conceptualizing Seriality, Ecology, and Eco-Pedagogy”
  • Gordon Sayre (U of Oregon): “The Humanity of the Car: Automobility, Agency, and Autonomy”
• 7.45-8.00: Wrap up: Situated Practices (Betsy Wheeler & Judith Rauscher)

Wednesday, March 17: Transatlantic Conversations

• 6.00-6.15 p.m.: Welcome (Betsy Wheeler & Judith Rauscher)
• 6.15-7.15 p.m.: Presentations + Discussion
  • Katrina Maggiuili (U of Oregon): “Critiquing the Environmentalist Rhetoric of Fear in the College Classroom"
  • Roman Bartosch (U of Cologne): "Scaling Crisis: Critical Environmental Education and the Affordances of Film"
  • Sarah Wald (U of Oregon) “Unnaturalizing the Normative Powers of Nature: Teaching Popular Culture within Environmental Studies"
• 7.30-8.00 p.m.: Wrap Up (Betsy Wheeler & Judith Rauscher)
  • Where can we go from here?