Ways of Water: Aquatic Poetics and Politics in North American Literature and Culture
Ringvorlesung im Sommersemester 2024
Mittwochs, 18:00 – 20:00 Uhr
Jena: Ernst-Abbe-Platz 8, HS E028 | Bremen: GW2, B 2.890
Water is not only an elemental force and a vital matter for all living beings but it is also a deeply poetic and symbolic substance with an enduring history in the human imagination. This lecture series will examine how water serves as both a physical backdrop and a symbolic motif in North American literature. Ranging from water’s pivotal role in struggles for environmental justice, the imagination of water futures in speculative fiction, to aesthetic and symbolic dimensions of water in poetic works this lecture series explores the many ways in which water shapes North American literature.
Organisation
Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal, Friedrich Schiller Universität, Jena
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Knopf, Universität Bremen
Programm
| 03.04.24 | “The Spirit of Water“ Jessa Calderon (Chumash and Tongva Nations, Southern CA) |
| 10.04.24 | “Rivers and Rivering in North American Literature“ Caroline Rosenthal (Jena) |
| 17.04.24 | “Water and the Survivalist Imagination” Keyvan Allahyari (Oslo) |
| 24.04.24 | “Ocean and Tides in John Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez” Kerstin Knopf (Bremen) |
| 08.05.24 | “Grieving Glaciers: Ice, Loss, and Literature” Carolin Grzenia (Jena) |
| 15.05.24 | “Oceanic Routes and Roots: Tidalectics, Archipelagic Thinking and the Materiality of Water in the Poetry of Kaie Kellough and Junie Désil” Florian Wagner (Würzburg) |
| 22.05.24 | “White Whales, White Pools: An Aquatic Crossmapping of Emma Cline’s The Guest (2023) and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851)” Andrin Albrecht (Jena) |
| 29.05.24 | ”Wetland Murders and other Troubles in Selected Crime Novels by Attica Locke” Kylie Crane (Rostock) |
| 05.06.24 | “Paradigms of the Blue Humanities: Submersion, Buoyancy, Form” Steve Mentz (New York) |
| 12.06.24 | “Drawing #WaterBack in Indigenous Picturebooks” Amanda Halter (Jena) |
| 19.06.24 | “Maritime Flight in Contemporary Refugee Novels from the US and Canada” Alexandra Ganser (Wien) |
| 26.06.24 | "”Waves of Knowing": Gender and Oceanic Landscapes in US American Literature" Mita Bannerjee, Ruth Gehrmann (Mainz) |
| 03.07.24 | “Water(y) Matter(s): Water’s Materiality in Contemporary Theory and Fiction” Hanna Masslich (Jena) |
