FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS
Drafts of all of the manuscripts below are on invitation and/or have been completed and are awaiting publication.
Unsettling Futures: Cognitive and Emotional Estrangement in Environmental Science Fiction
In his seminal Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979), Darko Suvin argues “for an understanding of SF as the literature of cognitive estrangement” and for the presence of the narrative “Novum” as the element that makes science fiction “significantly different” from other types of fiction. Suvin’s claim that “cognition includes the imagination” is supported by the clinical research of neurologists such as Antonio Damasio, which shows that the human brain processes direct perception and imaginary perception in much the same way, triggering the same range of affective responses. For a deeper understanding of why this strategy can be so compelling in an environmental context, the first part of the chapter considers Robert Sinnerbrink’s concept of “emotional estrangement” as a useful complement to Suvin’s original term. In the second and third parts of the chapter, these theoretical insights are applied in a reading of Debbie Urbanski’s 2023 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel After World and Lars Kraume’s 2010 dystopian film Die Kommenden Tage (The Coming Days). Together, the three parts highlight the cognitive, affective, and moral dimensions of estrangement in our engagement with environmental science fiction.
(for The Liverpool Handbook of Environmental Science Fiction, edited by Eric Otto)
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Envisioning Greener Futures: Climate Adaptation in Documentary Film
While much of climate cinema has tended toward dystopia, there is an emerging strain of solution-oriented documentary that foregrounds messages of hope and resilience by portraying people who are engaged in climate action. The article considers two of these films – Luc Balthazar’s Duty of Care and Damon Gameau’s 2040 – combining a qualitative analysis of their narrative and visual strategies with the results of surveys that were conducted at screenings in Freiburg, Germany, within the framework of the inter- and transdisciplinary “Visions of Sustainability” project at the Sustainability Innovation Campus (University of Freiburg and KIT). Drawing on transformative research for sustainability and empirical ecocriticism, the study demonstrates that the two films cued hope and “a drive to action” in viewers, inspiring them to do more for climate protection in their own lives and environments.
(with Thomas Heintz and Anna-Maria Plannerer for Oxford Intersections: Climate Adaptation, section “Narratives of the Future,” edited by Adelina Johns-Putra and Kiu-wai Chu)
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Visions of Sustainability: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Green City Life
That cultural narratives play a vital role in sustainability transformations is a central insight informing empirical and cognitive strands of ecocriticism, which combine social science and humanities methods to investigate the impact of such narratives. The chapter introduces these approaches and, by way of example, analyzes the narrative strategies of Manon Turina and François Marques’s eco-documentary La Belle Ville/Green City Life in light of reception data collected at a screening in Freiburg, Germany in the context of the transdisciplinary “Visions of Sustainability” project. The analysis shows how the upbeat and solution-oriented film cued emotions of hope and “a drive to action” in viewers and that watching it had a positive influence on viewers’ perceived personal efficacy in contributing to an urban sustainability culture. The results suggest not only that cultural narratives can move viewers, shift attitudes, and impact action intentions, but also that conducting research on them has itself transformative potential.
(with Thomas Heintz, for the Handbook of Cultural Sustainability, edited by Martin Middeke, Gabriele Rippl, and Hubert Zapf. Under contract with DeGruyter)
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Empirical Ecocriticism
Across various fields, claims have been made about the capacity of narrative representations of the nonhuman in literature, film, and other media to shape the perceptions of the nonhuman and related attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, it is argued that such representations may reinforce exploitative views of the environment and nonhuman species – or, conversely, promote empathy, care, and pro-environmental action. Assessing the validity of such claims requires empirical testing. Empirical ecocriticism aims to do so by using methods derived from the social sciences (correlational and experimental studies in particular) combined with theories and approaches from the humanities (such as ecocriticism and animal studies). This chapter outlines the methodology of empirical ecocriticism and demonstrates its benefits through examples of concrete studies investigating the attitudinal and behavioral influence of literary representations of the climate crisis and non-human animals. Studies concerning representations of the nonhuman in other media formats will be included for comparison.
(with W.P. Malecki and Thomas Heintz, for the Bloomsbury Handbook to Literatures of the Nonhuman, edited by Erin James and Marco Caracciolo)