Readings in the Anthropocene

Sabine Wilke is Professor of German at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, where she is also associated with European Studies and the Program in Critical Theory. Her research and teaching interests include modern German literature and culture, intellectual history and theory, and cultural studies. She is the author of German Culture and the Modern Environmental Imagination (2015) and editor of From Kafka to Sebald: Modernism and Narrative Form (Bloomsbury, 2012).Japhet Johnstone is project manager and translator at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He is co-editor of Crimes of Passion: Representations of Sexual Pathology in the Early Twentieth Century (2015).

The thirteen interdisciplinary essays assembled in this volume demonstrate that transatlantic German Studies scholars are at the forefront of cultural studies research on the Anthropocene … The contributors … offer innovative examinations of German-language literature, film, photography, philosophy, illustrated periodicals, critical theory, and locations. … The re-interpretation of canonical nineteenth-century literature makes this volume shine. … I highly recommend Wilke and Johnstone’s Readings in the Anthropocene. The volume is essential reading for specialists and broader audiences conducting cultural studies research and living ethically in the Anthropocene.

• Introduction: Rethinking Literary History, Critical Reading Practices, and Cultural Studies in the AnthropoceneSabine Wilke, University of Washington, USAI. Entanglements 1. A World Without Us: Aesthetic, Literary and Scientific Imaginations of Nature beyond HumankindWolfgang Struck, University of Erfurt, Germany2. Hybrid Environments in the Anthropocene: Recent FictionCarolina Schaumann, Emory University, USA, and Heather Sullivan, Trinity University, USA3. Looking Behind Walls. Literary and Filmic Imaginations of Nature and Humanity in Haushofer's Die Wand Sabine Frost, University of Washington, USAII. Excess/Sustainability4. Care and Forethought: The Idea of Sustainability in Hegel’s Practical PhilosophyKlaus Vieweg, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Germany5. Save the Forest, Burn Books: On the Science and Poetics of Sustainability in Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Markus Wilczek, Tufts University, USA6. Mocking the Anthropocene: Caricatures of Man-made Landscapes in German Satirical Magazines from the Fin de SiècleEvi Zemanek, University of Freiburg, Germany7. The Darkness of the Anthropocene: Wolfgang Hilbig’s Alte Abdeckerei.Sabine Nöllgen, University of Puget Sound, USAIII. Periodization and Scale8. Immanuel Kant, the Anthropocene, and the Idea of Environmental CosmopolitanismAmos Nascimento, University of Washington Tacoma, USA9. Adalbert Stifter and the Gentle AnthropoceneSean Ireton, University of Missouri, USA10. Engineering the Anthropocene: Technology, Ambition, and Enlightenment in Theodor Storm’s Der SchimmelreiterKatie RitsonIV. Diffusion, the Lithic, and a Planetary Praxis11. Petrifiction: Reimagining the Mine in German RomanticismJason Groves, San Francisco State University, USA12. The Anthroposcene of Literature: Diffuse Dwelling in Graham Swift and W.G. SebaldBernhard Malkmus, Ohio State University, USA13. Planetary Praxis in the Anthropocene: An Ethics and Poetics for a New Geological AgeSabine Wilke, University of Washington, USAEpilogue: The Anthropocene in German PerspectiveAxel Goodbody, University of Bath, UKBibliographyIndex