Atmosfears: The Uncanny Climate of Contemporary Ecofiction

We live in a critical moment in history, often called the »Anthropocene«, that is defined by unprecedented scales of uncertainty. Natalie Dederichs draws on insights from the new materialisms about the entangled nature of planetary existence and combines them with approaches to aesthetics from fields as diverse as reader-response criticism, phenomenology, Gothic and media studies. She introduces a poetics of atmospheric re(lation)ality as a necessary component of any ecological engagement with fiction that fully embraces literary encounters with the inaccessible and elusive as expressed in uncanny atmospheric reading experiences.

About the author

Natalie Dederichs received her doctorate in Anglophone literatures and cultures at the University of Bonn, where she also worked as a research assistant for the DFG Research Training Group 2291: Gegenwart/Literatur. She completed her teacher training at the ZfsL Düsseldorf in 2022. Her research interests include ecocriticism and environmental philosophy, literary theory, English language teaching and education for sustainability.

Summary

We live in a critical moment in history, often called the »Anthropocene«, that is defined by unprecedented scales of uncertainty. Natalie Dederichs draws on insights from the new materialisms about the entangled nature of planetary existence and combines them with approaches to aesthetics from fields as diverse as reader-response criticism, phenomenology, Gothic and media studies. She introduces a poetics of atmospheric re(lation)ality as a necessary component of any ecological engagement with fiction that fully embraces literary encounters with the inaccessible and elusive as expressed in uncanny atmospheric reading experiences.

Additional text

»Keenly aware of the difficulty of making statements ›about the actual ethical impact‹ of her chosen texts, her propositions for their ›affective affordances‹ are well argued and quite refreshing in that she makes a coherent case for the intrinsic value of literature and the study of it in times of anthropogenic climate change.«

Report

Besprochen in:
https://yaleclimateconnections.org, 14.09.2023, Michael Svoboda
MEDIENwissenschaft, 2 (2025), Marco Rognini
20230828

Product details

• Authors: Natalie Dederichs
• Publisher: Transcript
• Languages: English, German
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 15.05.2023
• EAN: 9783837665871
• ISBN: 978-3-8376-6587-1
• No. of pages: 288
• Dimensions: 145 mm x 24 mm x 230 mm
• Weight: 450 g
• Series: Gegenwartsliteratur; Critical Futures; Gegenwartsliteratur 22
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Humanities (general); Englische Literatur, Englische Literatur Amerikas, Literature, Literary Studies, Sociology, British Studies, Cultural Studies, Nature, Climate Change, American Studies, Ecology, Animals & society, Ecocriticism, Human Geography, Sociology and anthropology, Atmospheres, Philosophy and psychology, Culture and institutions, Factors affecting social behavior, Economics of land and energy, History, geography, and auxiliary disciplines, Literature (Belles-lettres) and rhetoric, English and Old English (Anglo-Saxon) literatures, Ecogothic