Scheda

Dettaglio

• Titolo:
  Brill Companion to the Literary History of the Early Anthropocene
• Paese:
  Denmark
• Scadenza:
  01-05-2024 - Ore 23:59
• Descrizione:
  
  

  Brill Companion to the Literary History of the Early Anthropocene (ed. by Anne Fastrup, Stefanie Heine, Sebastian Ørtoft Rasmussen and Christa Holm Vogelius)
  
  Under contract at Brill, this collection will be the first handbook to offer a historical overview of both canonical and non-canonical early anthropocene literature from a broad geographical perspective. Balancing literary historical context and overview with individual case studies, the handbook aims at mapping literary renderings of the complex connections between the Earth system and human-made systems from before 1945 – with the contention that the end of the second world war marks the modern anthropogenic era of the Great Acceleration. Thus placing literary work before the nuclear age in the context of contemporary discussions around the Anthropocene, the collection’s historical markers include retrospectively-defined moments such as the Orbis spike (1610) or concrete interventions such as the invention of the Watt steam engine (1774). The literary archive unfolded in the companion engages with complex entanglements between humans and their environment, for example through tales of whaling and sugar-plantations, poetry on regenerative farming practices  and stories of terraforming, deforestation, and flood prevention.
  
  While not purporting to be comprehensive, the collection is comparative and global, with works and genres including the non-canonical and the not traditionally literary, such as almanacs, folklore, children’s adventure stories or scientific poetry and prose. Investigations that take into account race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and class/economic structures are particularly welcome. We consider the Anthropocene both as a perspective, method, and (literary-) historical narrative, and as a lived reality shaped by cultural, social, and political forces.
  
  We welcome single-authored as well as collaborative contributions of approximately 6000-9,000 words, with abstracts of 500 words (plus a short bio for each of the contributors) due by May 1, 2024. Should the abstract be accepted, full chapters will be due by December 15, 2024. Each contribution should investigate a literary work or corpus of literary works in light of one or a combination of the following themes:
  
      Historiographic and methodological challenges: How does the anthropocene complicate standard accounts of literary or cultural history?  We especially welcome debates and differing perspectives on the era’s timeline as an intrinsic means of constituting the period itself, as well as discussions of the methodological, political, and comparative challenges anthropocene literature brings to teleological histories and linear chronologies.
      Ecological events and processes: How has literature responded to specific ecological incidents, practices, or discourses? For instance, an entry might consider the role of erosion in Henry David Thoreau’s Cape Cod (1865); compare the effects of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora on British Romantic and Bima Sultunate literature; study ecological doomsday narratives or literature on animal rights, forestry or flood-prevention; investigate dialogues between literary works and scientific engagements with nature (e.g. in meteorology, geology, or the life sciences); the early 19th century novels about the cultivation of the Danish heath.  
      Appropriation, exploitation, resilience: How has literature represented capitalizations on natural resources, and/or nature’s defiance? Entries might consider farming, draining, fishing, drilling, mining, as well as the land-grabs and reterritorialization that often precede such capitalizations; investigate the significance of  oil to 11th century Persian literature; trace interactions between the Freiberg Bergakademi and the German Romantics in the later half of the 18th century; study representations of plantationing and human-trafficking in Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789); negotiate reflections of sustainably, resilience and colonial invasion the mid 16th-century Nahuatl Florentine Codex (1569); the praise of the Caribbean plantation system and sugar canes in James Grainger’s The Sugar Cane (1764).
      Habitat, mapping, terraforming, utopian visions: How has literature imagined habitats, and responded to attempts of shaping, surveying, and distributing land according to human needs, desires, and opportunities? Entries might study fictions of climate and artificial atmospheres in Fin de Siècle literature; consider the role of dikes in Theodor Storm’s Der Schimmelreiter (1888); discuss conjunctions of alpine myths with notions of home, for example in Johanna Spyri’s Heidi (1881); comparatively read fictions of land reclamation of the Rhine and the Yangzi rivers in the 17th century; explore the impact of cattle fences in Western novels; investigate the role of gardening, e.g. in Madeleine de Scudéry’s La Carte de Tendre (1654-1660) or the role of military cartography in the work of Stendhal.
      Proto-Ecology, entanglement and metabolism: How has literature taken stock of entanglements between humans and their environment? For instance, entries might investigate the idea of multispecies entanglements in oral traditions and folklore; parse human-non-human assemblages in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c. 8) or Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855); explore the pioneering ecofeminist literary movements of the late 19th century; track the narrative recording of nature/culture-metabolism in regional and peasant literature of the early 20th century.
      More-than-human perspectives and temporalities: How has literature imagined or attempted to represent the more-than-human? How has it explored geological deep time? Contributions could, for example, focus on the “anthropomorphisation” of animals, objects, and plants in fables, fairy tales, or Kafka’s novels; describe the cosmic pluralism and the idea of extraterrestrial life in 17th century prose fictions; study works written or co-written by non-human subjects; consider the entangled historical layers of human interaction with nature in, for example in for example in Romantic poetry and Gothic fiction; focus on alternative ways of “telling the time” in indigenous myths; discuss the meditations on deep time in Goethe’s Über den Granit (1784).
  
  Additional themes and perspectives that are not encompassed by the above categorisation are welcome. Entries do not need to be comprehensive but should situate the particular investigation within a broader scholarly field, or in the case of more expansive investigations, should work through particular readings in sample texts. As the handbook also aims to inspire students and younger researchers, we request that all contributors share their methodological considerations, choices and challenges with the readers.

  
  Contact Information
  Stefanie Heine, Dr. habil.
  Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature
  Department of Arts and Cultural Studies
  Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen
  Karen Blixens Vej 1, Office 21.3.40
  DK-2300 Copenhagen S
  Contact Email
  stefanie.heine@hum.ku.dk