Picture of a book in nature

Ecocriticism Research Collective

Picture of a book in nature
Image: Carolin Grzenia

Ecocriticism Research Collective 

We are a collaborative peer working group consisting of young researchers and teachers from diverse backgrounds who are interested in the field of Ecocriticism. Ecocriticism is a flourishing field of literary and cultural studies that examines the relationship between nature and the cultural imagination. While we each approach the field from different angles, our ideas intersect in fundamental ways allowing for critical engagement, collaboration, and constructive feedback. We hold regular working meetings in which we exchange texts (i.e., sections of our dissertations, talks, publications, projects, etc.) and share ideas. We are open to guest lectures and collaborative projects. As a group, our interests are vast and include:

  • Ecocriticism’s historical roots, continuances, and legacies within the environmental imagination
  • The reconceptualization of wilderness and wild spaces
  • American Romanticism and nature writing
  • Ecofeminism and its trajectories
  • Environmental justice and indigenous literatures
  • The Anthropocene concept in literary and cultural studies
  • Climate change fiction and life writing
  • Ecopoetry
  • Posthumanism
  • New Materialism
  • Affect Studies

Feel free to get in touch with us: ecocriticismrc@gmail.com

Faculty Advisor

  • Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal

    Select Publications

    • Anglophone Literature and Culture in the Anthropocene, ed. wth Gina Comos. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars 2019.
    • "Sehnsuchtsort Natur: Von Ralph Waldo Emerson zu Peter Wohlleben. Schreiben über Natur in den USA und in Deutschland" (mit Peter Braun). Weiland, Marc/Werner Nell (eds.) Gutes Leben auf dem Land? Imaginationen und Projektionen. (Reihe: Rurale Topographien, Bd.12). Bielefeld: Transcript 2021: 167-197.
    • "Wildnis Stadt: Zeitgenössisches Urban Birding und seine historischen Wurzeln in den USA." In: Kerschbaumer, Sandra/Gisela Mettele (eds.) Romantische Urbanität. Wien/Köln: Böhlau 2020: 187-209.
    • "Landmarken: Das Konzept des Bioregionalismus bei Gary Snyder und Helmut Salzinger"(with Peter Braun). Zeitschrift für Germanistik XXX: 2 (2020): 363-380. 
    • "The Nature(s) of Canadian Ecocriticism and Ecopoetry." In Comos/Rosenthal (eds.) Anglophone Literature in the Anthropocene. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2019: 96-114.
    • "Introduction" (with Gina Comos) to Anglophone Literature in the Anthropocene. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2019: i-xv.
    • "Modell des einfachen Lebens: Henry David Thoreaus Walden." In Kerschbaumer, Sandra/ Stefan Matuschek (eds.) Romantik erkennen – Modelle finden. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2019: 169-186.
    • "Sean Penn's Into the Wild." Peters, Susanne et al. (eds.) Teaching Contemporary Literature and Culture. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag 2013: 369-386.
    Learn more de

Current Members

  • Andrin Albrecht

    PhD Candidate in American Literature and Member of the DfG Research Training Group "Modell Romantik" at FSU Jena

    •  Dissertation Project: Romantic Authroships and White Male Genius in the Wale of Moby-Dick
    •  Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal

    Talks

    • "That's Fucking Dark: Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood as Ecogothic." Undead Tropes: New Directions in Gothic Studies, org. Evangelia Kindinger and Greta Kaisen, Humboldt University Berlin, 12 January 2024.
    • "Is It Alright if I Don't Sing Tonight? Romance, Romanticism, and Climate Grief in Contemporary Popular Music." Part of the international guest lecture series Contemporary Contexts and Debates: 21st Century Literatures and Cultures in English, National University "Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic" (Ukraine), 4 October 2023. Virtual.
    • "Climate Grief and Romantic Nescience in Contemporary Popular Music." New Romanticism – BARS/NASSR 2022, Edge Hill University (United Kingdom), 3 August 2022.

    Publications

  • Gina Comos

    Former PhD Candidate and Research Associate in American Studies, FSU Jena 

    •  Dissertation Project: "To Accept Responsibility and Forgo the Control?”: Women and Nature in US-American Literature of the Anthropocene
    •  Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal 

    Publications

    • Anglophone Literature and Culture in the Anthropocene. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2019. (edited with Caroline Rosenthal) 
    • "Introduction." In: Anglophone Literature in the Anthropocene (ed.). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars 2019, i-xv. (with Caroline Rosenthal) 
    • "American Ecocriticism and the Literature of the Anthropocene." In: Gina Comos Comos and Caroline Rosenthal, eds. Anglophone Literature in the Anthropocene. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars 2019, 48-66.

    Conference Talks

    • "Applying Ecofeminist Principles to Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation." Ecocritical Life Writing in the Dystopic Present (international workshop). 06.12.2019, Augsburg, DE.
    • "The Anthropocene in Literary and Cultural Studies." Narratives of Crisis: Anglophone Literature and Culture in the Anthropocene (lecture series). 06.04.2017, FSU Jena, DE.
    • "Ecocriticism and the Challenge of the Anthropocene." Regional Colloquium of American Studies (Netzwerk Amerikanistik Mitteldeutschland). 13.01.2017, Dt. Literaturinstitut Leipzig, DE.
    Learn moreExternal link
  • Carolin Grzenia

    PhD Candidate and Research Associate in American Studies, FSU Jena 

    •  Dissertation Project: "Climate Grief in the Contemporary Memoir"
    •  Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal 

    Talks

    •  "Grieving Glaciers: Ice, Loss, and Literature." Ways of Water: Aquatic Poetics and Politics in North American Literatures (Lecture Series), FSU Jena & Universität Bremen, 08.05.2024.
    •  "Mourning the More-Than-Human: Climate Grief in the Contemporary Memoir." Regional Colloquium of American Studies, Universität Leipzig, 14.04.2023.
    •  "Despair and Hope in Environmental Literature." Public Climate School, FSU Jena, 17.05.2022.

    Other

    Former Honours Student in the Honours Programme, FSU Jena

    •  Honours Project: “Affect and Emotion in Climate Fiction”
    •  Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal
  • Amanda Halter

    PhD Candidate and Research Associate in American Studies, FSU Jena

    •  Dissertation Project: Reading Environmental Violence in Contemporary American Young Adult Fiction (working title)
    •  Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal 

    Conference Talks

    • "'Re-Drawing' Nature: The Environmental Imagination in Contemporary Picturebooks." Invited guest lecture in the seminar "Bilderbücher in der Grundschule," University of Potsdam, 26.09.2022.
    • “Addressing a Failing US Environmental Education: The Potential of Young Adult Anthropocene Fiction.” Annual DGfA Meeting: Political Education & American Studies, University of Tübingen, June 9-11, 2022.
    • "The Bildungsroman in the Anthropocene: Reading Narratives of Formation in the New Epoch." Regional Colloquium of American Studies. 25.10.2019, Halle, DE.
    • “Ecocriticism and Young Adult Literature: Texts as Expressive Agents for Change.” Guest Lecture, Nature Writing and Ecocriticism Lecture Series, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, 21.01.2021.
    • “Crises, Chasms, and Unlikely Collectives: Growing Up in Contemporary Young Adult Eco-Dystopian Fiction.” International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts: Climate Change and the Anthropocene, virtual, 20.03.2021.
    • “’Maybe it was the end of the world- that world’: An Examination of Hope in Young Adult Eco-Dystopian Fiction of the Anthropocene.” 31st Annual Mardi Gras Graduate Student Conference: Uncertain Futures: Exploring Ambiguities, Hopes and Anxieties, Louisiana State University, virtual, 10.02.2021.
    • “At the Center of the Storm: A Critical Analysis of Adolescence in Young Adult Eco-Fiction.” Workshop on Constructions of Adolescence, Technische Universität Dresden, virtual, 16.07.2021.
    Learn more de
  • Jaime Hyatt

    PhD Candidate in American Studies, Fsu Jena;
    Research Associate at the Imre Kertész Kolleg, Jena, Institute of Advanced Studies 

    •  Dissertation Project: Tree Activism in Contemporary North American Literature: Politicizing the Environment of the Pacific Northwest (working title)
    •  Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal

    Publications

    Events

    • "Our Loves are Not Only Human: Collective Care and Entanglements." Reading workshop, 23.01. 2020, held at Akademie Schloss Solitude. 
    Learn moreExternal link
  • Hanna Masslich

    PhD Candidate and Research Associate at the "Thüringer Wasser-Innovationscluster", FSU Jena

    •  Dissertation Project: Narrating Water/Water's Narrativity: Representations of Rising Water in Contemporary Fiction (Arbeitstitel)
    •  Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal

    Publications

    • Masslich, Hanna. "Salvage Water Memory: Materiality and Memory in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones." COPAS - Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies 24:1 (2023), 58-72.

    Conference Talks

    • Narrating Water: 'Modern,' 'Relational,' and 'Radical' Water in Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140." International Workshop: Relationality and More-Than-Human Storytelling, University of Augsburg, July 13-15, 2023.
    • "Salvage Water Memory: Materiality and Memory in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones." 32nd Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies: Remembering: Transnational Memory Cultures and American Studies, University of Regensburg, November 10-12, 2022.
  • Luisa Turczynski

    Former PhD Candidate at the "Romanticism as a Model" research training group, FSU Jena 

    •  Dissertation Project: (Re-)Imagining Nature, Gender, and Sexuality in American Romanticism and Beyond 
    •  Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal 

    Publications

    Conference Talks

    • "From Otherization to Identification? Re-Modeling the Romantic Self-Nature-Relation in (Proto-) Ecofeminist and Queer-Ecological Writings." International Workshop "Ecocritical Life Writing in the Dystopic Present". 05.-06.12.2019, Augsburg, DE.
    Learn moreExternal link
  • Florian Wagner

    PhD Candidate in American Studies, FSU Jena

    •  Dissertation Project: Revisiting the Environmental Imagination: Planetary Poetics in Contemporary Canadian Poetry (working title)
    •  Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Caroline Rosenthal 

    Publications

    Conference Talks (Selection)

    • "Revisiting the Environmental Imagination: Planetary Poetics in Contemporary Canadian Poetry." Emerging Scholars Colloquium, 43rd Annual Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries (GKS), February 17-19, 2022. http://www.kanada-studien.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/gks22_colloquium-booklet_final.pdfExternal link
    • "'Keep Your Solar Plexus Shining Brighter Than Your Necklace': Female Empowerment and Holistic Spirituality in Environmentally Conscious Hip Hop" Hip Hop Ecologies- A Workshop, University of Konstanz, February 18-20, 2021.
    • "Revisiting the Utopian Imaginary: Of Species-Being(s), the Multitude and Sympoietic Worlding in Times of Ecological Crisis." Historical Materialism Annual Conference 2019, November 07-11, 2019, SOAS London, GB. (DAAD Travel Grant)
    • Wagner, Florian. "The Species-Being in the Anthropocene: Finding Companionship and Collectivizing Struggle in Gary Snyder’s Turtle Island." Historical Materialism Athens 2019, May 02-05, 2019, Panteion University Athens, GD. 
    Learn moreExternal link

News

Upcoming Events

  • Ways of Water: Aquatic Poetics and Politics in North American Literatures (SoSe 2024, Lecture Series de)

Past Events

  • "WILD = IRREGULAR." (Caroline Rosenthal). Roundtable, "Let's Talk Wild,"External link Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, 03.06.2024.
  • "The Environmental Humanities." Ringvorlesung Nachhaltigkeit, FSU Jena, 02.11.2023.
  • "Ecocriticism on the Ground: A Sketch of Ecocriticial Work at FSU." Research Colloquium at the Ernst-Haeckel-Haus, FSU Jena, 29.06.2023.
  • "Literature and Literary Studies in/of the Anthropocene." (Carolin Grzenia and Amanda Halter). Guest Lecture, "Teaching the Climate Crisis," FSU Jena, 21.06.2023.
  • "Facets of Literature in the Anthropocene." (Carolin Grzenia, Amanda Halter, and Florian Wagner). Guest Lecture, “Nature Writing and Ecocriticism,” FSU Jena, 12.01.2023.
  • "The Anthropocene in Art and Literature." (Carolin Grzenia, Amanda Halter, and Florian Wagner). Guest Lecture, "Romantic Thought in the Epoch of the Anthropocene," FSU Jena, 03.05.2022.
  • "Environmental Crisis and Culture: An Introduction to Ecocriticism and a Public Discussion." Public Climate School, FSU Jena, 22.11.2021. 
  • "Climate Change Stories: A Reading and Discussion." (Amanda Halter and Jaime Hyatt). Public Climate School, FSU Jena, 19.05.2021.
  • "The Climate Crisis and the Literary Imagination: A Reading and Discussion with the Ecocriticism Research Collective." Public Climate School, FSU Jena, 24.11.2020.

Recent Publications 

  • Rosenthal, Caroline and Amanda Halter. “Post-Pandemic Walden: An Examination of Thoreauvian Place-Based Education Through Covid and Beyond." Teacher Education in (Post-)Pandemic Times: International Perspectives on Interculturality, Diversity and Equity. Eds. Silke Braselmann, Lukas Eibensteiner, and Laurenz Volkmann. Peter Lang: 2023 (forthcoming).
  • Wagner, Florian. "Neo-Cosmopolitan Tidalectics as Planetary Poetics in Kaie Kellough's Magnetic Equator." Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies 11 (2022), 149-166. (https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/2254-1179/article/view/30684External link)
  • Hyatt, Jaime and Florian Wagner, eds. "Embracing the Loss of Nature: Searching for Responsibility in an Age of Crisis." COPAS Journal 22.1 (2021). (https://copas.uni-regensburg.de/issue/view/43External link)