<b>Human and Non-human Agencies in the Anthropocene</b> // Agencialidades humanas y no-humanas en el Antropoceno

University of Vechta, United States

gabriele.duerbeck@uni-vechta.de

Gabriele Dürbeck is professor of literature and cultural studies at University of Vechta since 2011. She is author of the book Stereotype Paradiese. Ozeanismus in der deutschsprachigen Südseeliteratur, 1815-1914 (2007), editor of the special focus on “Writing Catastrophes: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Sem­antics of Natural and Anthropogenic Disasters”, Ecozona 3.1, 2012 and co-editor of Postkoloniale Germanistik. Bestandsaufnahme, theoretische Perspektiven, Lektüren (2014) and the first German-speaking introduction into Ecocriticism (2015). She has published broadly on postcolonial studies, travel literature and the South Pacific, the history of imagination, and disaster literature.

Emory University, United States

cschaum@emory.edu

Caroline Schaumann, an Associate Professor of German Studies at Emory University and affiliated faculty with Jewish Studies and Film Studies, has established her presence in the growing field of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities with three research articles in peer-reviewed journals on Alexander von Humboldt (2009, 2013, 2014), and three articles on mountain literature and film, two of them forthcoming this year in Literatur für Leser and The German Quarterly.  She has co-edited the anthology Heights of Reflection with Sean Ireton in 2012 (Camden House), and more recently, co-edited a special volume of Colloquia Germanica on “Dirty Nature” with Heather Sullivan (2014).  Currently, Schaumann is working on two projects: 1) a monograph examining nineteenth-century depictions of exploration in the Alps, Andes, and the Sierra Nevada that considers the cultural shifts in the perception, written text, and imagery of mountains in the context of tourism, leisure, and the discontents of modernity.  2)  An anthology (co-edited with Heather Sullivan) on German Ecocriticism. Schaumann was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers 2012-2015.

Trinity University, United States

hsulliva@trinity.edu

Heather I. Sullivan is Professor of German, Comparative Literature, and Environmental Studies, and the faculty chair of the Sustainability Committee at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She is a board member of EASCLE (the European Association for the study of Culture, Literature and the Environment) and of the Goethe Society North America, and Chair of the translation grant committee for ASLE  (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment). Sullivan has published widely in the US and in Europe on ecocriticism, material ecocriticism, the “dark pastoral,” Goethe’s science and literature, the German romantics, and eco-science fiction. She guest co-edited a volume of ecocritical essays with Caroline Schaumann on “Dirty Nature” in Colloquia Germanica 44.2 (2012), published 2014; guest co-edited with Dana Phillips ISLE’s 2012 special volume on Material Ecocriticism, and guest co-edited with Bernhard Malkmus a volume for the New German Critique on “The Challenge of Ecology to the Humanities: Post-Humanism or New Humanism” expected 2016. She is author of The Intercontextuality of Self and Nature in Ludwig Tieck’s Early Works (1997). Current projects are a co-edited volume with Caroline Schaumann on German Ecocriticism with a focus on texts of the Anthropocene that will appear with Palgrave, and a monograph on the Dark Pastoral, which considers global climate change literature in the Anthropocene.