On 12 May, we, Andrea Volken and Aleksandra Lempp from Humboldt-Universität’s departments of English and European literatures, attended a Circle U. workshop at Aarhus University. We had connected in Professor Anne Enderwitz’s Climate Fiction seminar at the start of our MA studies and have gone on to specialize in and around this genre.
Professor Enderwitz, Circle U. Chair at the Think and Do Tank for the Future of Higher Education, invited us to join the workshop in Denmark. It was part of a project entitled “Risk, future narratives and sustainability”, which receives funding from Circle U. as an Interdisciplinary Thematic Research Network (ITRN).
Peer-to-peer
The event hosted BA and MA students from HU Berlin, the University of Oslo, and Aarhus University, coming from disciplines as diverse as art history, international community health, medicine, horticultural science, law, international business communication, and literature. This workshop was not about simply displaying knowledge, but about exchange and peer-to-peer learning.
This, and excellent moderation by Aarhus University’s Professor Antoinette Mary Fage-Butler and Professor Enderwitz, made for stimulating discussions that sought to forge connections between our fields for the common activist aim of contributing to a more just and sustainable world. The energy was exciting and accepting.
Exploring narratives for sustainable change
We began with discussing a climate fiction short story facilitated by Professor Enderwitz, exploring literature’s capability to provide future narratives that educate and galvanize by harnessing the readers’ empathy. We worked together to construct our own storyworlds, looking into how the stories we tell can provide a wide range of emotional reactions to and understanding of the many interacting crises the world faces. These storyworlds were presented to and discussed with the rest of the group.
The exercise acted as a natural point of departure for a fascinating discussion surrounding dualisms, the artificial divide between nature and culture within the climate change discourse, and the need to rethink how we interact with non-human actors.
Greater emphasis on immediate action
A fixture of our conversations was the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (un.org), the 17 aims established to foster sustainable development across economic, social, and environmental concerns, presented by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. We agreed that we appreciate the delineation but problematized a few aspects that seem to reinforce an unsustainable model of linear growth. We craved a greater emphasis on the need for biodiversity and the acknowledgment of the inherent interconnectedness of all goals. We concluded that the SDGs can and should be addressed utilizing the conceptual framework of intersectionality while putting greater emphasis on immediate action.
Professor Ben Anderson (Durham University) then gave a riveting keynote lecture over Zoom titled “Anticipating Futures in an Age of Uncertainty.” In a time of what seems to be innumerable calls to action for countless crises (environmental, racial, economic, etc.), his talk highlighted the notion that scenarios presenting catastrophic events were a way of bringing the future into the present and thus inspiring action.
Goals and inspiration for future research
Keeping a keen eye on the SDGs, we came together again to articulate our own goals. It was inspiring to hear, for example, that we were united in thinking that the issues addressed in the SDGs play out against a very specific background formed by the legacy of colonial power relations, the implicit imperative of economic growth, as well as a grossly unequal distribution of resources and access thereto, and that emphasizing this is crucial.
The mood by the end was electric; and we will undoubtedly be channeling what we learned into our own research. Aleksandra will be using both the discussions about rethinking the nature-culture divide and ideas on narrative structures in times of crisis from the keynote speech by Professor Anderson in her thesis research. Andrea has already excitedly told her research team about the workshop, and is looking forward to delving more into the discourse on ecological studies of empathy and affect. The workshop left us feeling inspired by the collaboration and, dare we say it, hopeful.
Andrea Volken is a Master’s student at Humboldt-Universität’s English literature department, where she also runs a research tutorial on “Applying Ecofeminism: A Collective and Interdisciplinary Approach”, funded by the Berlin University Alliance.
Aleksandra Lempp is a Master’s student of European literature at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. For her thesis, she is cross-examining recent publications of the Climate Fiction genre (CliFi) and advancements in our scientific knowledge regarding climate change.
