This annual colloquium seeks to examine how literary texts engage with technological and ecological transformations, revealing new narrative possibilities in an era of environmental uncertainty. The convergence of digital technologies and AI with climate discourse has created fertile ground for innovative storytelling that can illuminate complex interactions between technological and environmental risks and possibilities.
The escalating carbon footprints and resource consumption of new technologies such as AI further complicate these relations. The colloquium "Narrating Futures: Literature, Technology and Climate Discourse" presents an opportunity to interrogate the futures that fiction and other media delineate against this background. Over the course of two days, the exchange will also explore whether literary and cultural media can act as urgent interventions in how we conceptualize and address the defining crisis of our time.
The colloquium is designed to foster interdisciplinary exchange and to facilitate collaboration within the Circle U.-ecology, particularly between scholars and PhD students who are working on climate issues from a literary or cultural perspective.
Call for papers
The Circle U. colloquium welcomes papers that address intersections of technology and climate discourse in literature and other media. We are particularly interested in work that explores technological responses to environmental crises and in digital storytelling in climate communication.
Suggested topics include but are not limited to:
- literature' role in mediating our understanding of climate change
- digital technologies that reshape environmental storytelling
- how post humanist approaches de-center human experience in the Anthropocene
- interdisciplinary methodologies that bridge scientific knowledge and literary analysis
- the capacities of various storytelling media and their contributions to climate communication
- the role of technology and technological infrastructures in speculative and futuristic story worlds
Particularly encouraged are submissions that cross traditional boundaries between humanities and natural sciences, offering fresh perspectives on how literary studies can engage with urgent ecological questions as well as technological transformations.
We welcome proposals from researchers of the nine Circle U. universities and associated partners. Scholars at all career stages are welcome to participate. PhD students are emphatically invited to submit a proposal and participate in this workshop.
Please submit your 250-word abstract for a 20-minute presentation and a short bio by 1 September 2025 to circle-u.literature@hu-berlin.de. Selected scholars will be notified by early August.
Participation and funding
Selected scholars will present their work during the colloquium on 14 and 15 November 2025 at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
A limited number of travel grants is available. Please contact your home university for details.
If you are not in a position to receive funding from your sending institution, please let the organisers know when submitting your abstract.
