Policy Briefs, Review Essays, Research Notes by Seth Peabody
The 3rd edition of the Environmental Humanities Book Chat is devoted to Adrian Ivakhiv’s Ecologie... more The 3rd edition of the Environmental Humanities Book Chat is devoted to Adrian Ivakhiv’s Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature, 2013. Anna Åberg, Royal Institute of Technology, and Seth Peabody, Harvard University, discuss the book with moderator Hannes Bergthaller, National Chung-Hsing University and Würzburg University.
Ecologies of the Moving Image was published by Wilfred Laurier University Press as part of it's Environmental Humanities Series in 2013. For further details, visit the publisher's website at https://wlupress.wlu.ca/press/Catalog...
Anna Åberg defended her PhD in 2013 at the Division for the History of Science, Technology and Environment of the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Stockholm. Her thesis, "A Gap in the Grid," explores the role of natural gas in late 20th century Sweden. She recently received the Fernand Braudel post-doctoral fellowship for a project on fusion energy research in France and the Soviet Union in which she will examine the narrative and imaginative strategies used by different actors to promote, criticize and interpret technological development. In April 2014, she organized a combined film festival and conference, "Tales from Planet Earth," as a cooperation between KTH’s newly-formed Environmental Humanities Laboratory and the Center for Culture, History and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin.
Seth Peabody is a graduate student at Harvard University’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, where he is working on a Ph.D. thesis on German "Mountain Films" of the Weimar Period. He has been affiliated with the Berkeley-Tübingen-Wien-Harvard, BTWH, research network on modernity in German culture since 2009, and spent the past year as a research fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. His research focuses on German cinema.
Hannes Bergthaller is associate professor at National Chung-Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, and currently an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at the University of Würzburg. He is the author of Populäre Ökologie: Zu Literatur und Geschichte der modernen Umweltbewegung in den USA, Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2007, and co-editor of Addressing Modernity: Social Systems Theory and US Cultures, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011; with Carsten Schinko. He is immediate past president of EASLCE and book review editor of the journal Ecozon@.
Papers by Seth Peabody
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, Sep 1, 2021
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German
De Gruyter eBooks, Feb 6, 2023
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German
Environmental issues have received significant attention in German Studies for a number of years,... more Environmental issues have received significant attention in German Studies for a number of years, leading to innovations in both research and pedagogy. More recently, attention has focused on applied pedagogical practices such as service‐learning projects and bilateral exchanges related to environmental sustainability. While these initiatives offer numerous potential benefits, as shown in research on high‐impact practices, and while the topic may attract students to learn German, these forms of teaching entail a range of challenges and questions for educators that are distinct from the work traditionally carried out in German language pedagogy. This co‐authored article offers resources for working through these challenges and introduces a collection of free online materials currently in development. We suggest a model of critical environmental thinking in the classroom that asks students to use the target language to reexamine familiar concepts and daily practices connected to the e...
Humanities
The German mountain film (Bergfilm) has received extensive critical attention for its political, ... more The German mountain film (Bergfilm) has received extensive critical attention for its political, social, and aesthetic implications, but has received remarkably little attention for its role in the environmental history of the Alps. This article considers the Bergfilm within the long history of depictions of the Alps and the growth of Alpine tourism in order to ask how the role of media in environmental change shifts with the advent of film. The argument builds on Verena Winiwarter and Martin Knoll’s model of social-ecological interaction, Adrian Ivakhiv’s theoretical framework for the environmental implications of film, and Laura Frahm’s theories of filmic space. Through an analysis of Arnold Fanck’s films Der heilige Berg [The Holy Mountain, Fanck 1926] and Der große Sprung [The Great Leap, Fanck 1927], which are compared with Gustav Renker’s novel Heilige Berge [Holy Mountains, Renker 1921] and set into the context of the environmental history of the Alpine regions where the film...
Colloquia Germanica, 2021
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 2021
This article describes strategies that the author employed to make a general education course tit... more This article describes strategies that the author employed to make a general education course titled “Fairy Tales and Folklore” more diverse and inclusive. Students read primary texts and secondary articles as part of ongoing debates, then form their own arguments within the debate, thus coming to understand how fairy tales are embedded within open and ongoing critical discussions about contemporary culture. Further, students analyze a classic work of Native American literature that, like the Grimm Brothers’ Kinder‐ und Hausmärchen, employs folklore within a project of cultural nationalism, but with very different implications due to systems of power and oppression that emerge at the intersection of folklore and colonization. Finally, students create new tales out of their own experiences. Through analysis of diverse texts, debate, and creative writing that emphasize the role of storytelling as resistance, the course described here takes first steps toward turning the fairy‐tale cla...
Christopher Schliephake's 2015 book Urban Ecologies: City Space, Material Agency, and Environment... more Christopher Schliephake's 2015 book Urban Ecologies: City Space, Material Agency, and Environmental Politics in Contemporary Culture carries out a broad-ranging analysis of books, television series, and films that contribute to what Schliephake calls a "cultural urban ecology" (xli). The book aims to fill two gaps: a lack of attention to urban environments within ecocriticism, and a neglect of culture among studies of urban ecology. Schliephake's work will prove especially useful for readers interested in urban environments, television and film, material ecocriticism, and cultural ecology. The book's introduction provides an overview of key terms, offers literature reviews for related discussions in various disciplines, and gives a concise preview of the texts and arguments discussed in the following chapters. It begins by developing a notion of urban ecology based on ideas of Lewis Mumford, who sees the city as a "conscious work of art" (xi), and Gregory Bateson, who describes ecology as "a metaphor for the interconnection of all matter" and redefines "mind" as "a principle that is 'immanent' to all structures and objects, be they natural or cultural" (xii). Schliephake endorses this view that urban spaces harbor "minds" and are made up of "manifold and complex material interrelationships" (xii) with their respective natural environments. Against this background, he emphasizes the role of culture within the urban system: "I argue that an urban ecology which only takes into account the socio-spatial or material processes that frame urban life is incomplete, since manifestations of the cultural imagination have to be seen as integral parts of what we refer to as the 'environment.' I want to show that it is through the imagination that meaning is attached to urban space" (xii). He suggests that cultural works not only ascribe meaning to spaces and reflect on the relationships between natural and cultural systems, but also-following Hubert Zapf's ideas about literature as cultural ecology-create a forum for imagining alternate possibilities (xviii). The middle portion of the introduction situates Schliephake's argument within related discussions from literary studies, social sciences (especially environmental history and political science), and natural sciences. Throughout, Schliephake praises the ways in which the natural and social sciences have recognized "space, materiality, and politics [...] as integral dimensions of urban environments," but suggests that "the cultural imagination has largely been missing from their conceptual framework" (xli). The final portion of the introduction gives an overview of the ensuing chapters that seek to fill this gap. Drawing on ideas from Ursula Heise and others, Chapter One argues that certain works of creative nonfiction create a sense of "eco-cosmopolitanism" that recognizes
Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 2018
Goethe occupies a prominent but conflicted position within recent discussions of global inequalit... more Goethe occupies a prominent but conflicted position within recent discussions of global inequalities embedded into the notion of “world literature.” Scholars have also debated Goethe’s environmental thought. Some critics describe him as a progressive environmental thinker, while others paint him as a staunch conservative resistant to changing views of nature. The present study claims that merging these two fields yields a better understanding of both political power and environmental change in Goethe’s writings. Drawing on theories of world literature, postcolonial studies, and environmental humanities, the present essay argues that Goethe’s texts display ambivalence with regards to both political power and environmental change. The argument is developed, in dialogue with past environmental interpretations of Goethe’s work, through an analysis of Die Wahlverwandtschaften. The essay proposes that Die Wahlverwandtschaften can serve as a key text for understanding the tensions in Goeth...
German Studies Review, 2020
Growing interest in the intersection of German studies and environmental sustainability has recen... more Growing interest in the intersection of German studies and environmental sustainability has recently generated a significant number of publications and curriculum development projects. These new curricular and cocurricular projects build on previous work on German environmental(ist) culture by including relationship-building with sustainability stakeholders on campus and in surrounding communities. Additionally, work in the environmental humanities continues to provide motivation for expanding the reach of course activities, both by engaging with broader communities and by developing service-learning projects as part of a well-articulated larger push to implement high-impact practices. Yet connecting cultural analysis to engagement with sustainability-focused local organizations can prove challenging in unexpected ways, and for many scholars and educators in German studies, past teaching experience and pedagogy training may not provide sufficient preparation for building partnerships outside the classroom. Full file: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/42353
German Studies Review, 2020
Growing interest in the intersection of German studies and environmental sustainability has recen... more Growing interest in the intersection of German studies and environmental sustainability has recently generated a significant number of publications 1 and curriculum development projects. 2 These new curricular and cocurricular projects build on previous work on German environmental(ist) culture by including relationshipbuilding with sustainability stakeholders on campus and in surrounding communities. Additionally, work in the environmental humanities continues to provide motivation for expanding the reach of course activities, both by engaging with broader communities and by developing service-learning projects as part of a well-articulated larger push to implement high-impact practices. 3 Yet connecting cultural analysis to engagement with sustainability-focused local organizations can prove challenging in unexpected ways, 4 and for many scholars and educators in German studies, past teaching experience and pedagogy training may not provide sufficient preparation for building partnerships outside the classroom. 5 For a 2019 GSA seminar entitled "Sustainability and German Studies: From Ecocriticism to Community Engagement," Seth Peabody (St. Olaf College) and Dan Nolan (University of Minnesota Duluth) gathered a group of scholar-educators for three days to explore new possibilities for bridging ecocritical analysis, engaged scholarship, community partnership development, and interdisciplinary intercultural learning in German studies. The seminar was sponsored by AATG and the GSA's Environmental Studies Network. Shortly after the seminar, the DAAD-sponsored Center for German and European Studies and the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities hosted a follow-up symposium organized by Charlotte Melin (University of Minnesota), Kiley Kost (Carleton College), Nolan, and Peabody. In what follows, we trace the motivation and organization of the seminar and symposium, share key insights from participants, and discuss forthcoming related initiatives. Nolan and Peabody's motivation to organize the seminar grew out of practical concerns about designing and teaching courses that combine work on the theoretical foundations of environmental thinking, aesthetic and literary representations of
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 2019
German Studies Review, 2019
Goethe occupies a prominent but conflicted position within recent discussions of global inequalit... more Goethe occupies a prominent but conflicted position within recent discussions of global inequalities embedded into the notion of “world literature.” Scholars have also debated Goethe’s environmental thought. Some critics describe him as a progressive environmental thinker, while others paint him as a staunch conservative resistant to changing views of nature. The present study claims that merging these two fields yields a better understanding of both political power and environmental change in Goethe’s writings. Drawing on theories of world literature, postcolonial studies, and environmental humanities, the essay argues that Goethe’s texts display ambivalence with regards to both political power and environmental change. The argument is developed, in dialogue with past environmental interpretations of Goethe’s work, through an analysis of Die Wahlverwandtschaften. The essay proposes that Die Wahlverwandtschaften can serve as a key text for understanding the tensions in Goethe’s relations to environment, world literature, and political power.
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Policy Briefs, Review Essays, Research Notes by Seth Peabody
Ecologies of the Moving Image was published by Wilfred Laurier University Press as part of it's Environmental Humanities Series in 2013. For further details, visit the publisher's website at https://wlupress.wlu.ca/press/Catalog...
Anna Åberg defended her PhD in 2013 at the Division for the History of Science, Technology and Environment of the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Stockholm. Her thesis, "A Gap in the Grid," explores the role of natural gas in late 20th century Sweden. She recently received the Fernand Braudel post-doctoral fellowship for a project on fusion energy research in France and the Soviet Union in which she will examine the narrative and imaginative strategies used by different actors to promote, criticize and interpret technological development. In April 2014, she organized a combined film festival and conference, "Tales from Planet Earth," as a cooperation between KTH’s newly-formed Environmental Humanities Laboratory and the Center for Culture, History and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin.
Seth Peabody is a graduate student at Harvard University’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, where he is working on a Ph.D. thesis on German "Mountain Films" of the Weimar Period. He has been affiliated with the Berkeley-Tübingen-Wien-Harvard, BTWH, research network on modernity in German culture since 2009, and spent the past year as a research fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. His research focuses on German cinema.
Hannes Bergthaller is associate professor at National Chung-Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, and currently an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at the University of Würzburg. He is the author of Populäre Ökologie: Zu Literatur und Geschichte der modernen Umweltbewegung in den USA, Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2007, and co-editor of Addressing Modernity: Social Systems Theory and US Cultures, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011; with Carsten Schinko. He is immediate past president of EASLCE and book review editor of the journal Ecozon@.
Papers by Seth Peabody
Ecologies of the Moving Image was published by Wilfred Laurier University Press as part of it's Environmental Humanities Series in 2013. For further details, visit the publisher's website at https://wlupress.wlu.ca/press/Catalog...
Anna Åberg defended her PhD in 2013 at the Division for the History of Science, Technology and Environment of the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Stockholm. Her thesis, "A Gap in the Grid," explores the role of natural gas in late 20th century Sweden. She recently received the Fernand Braudel post-doctoral fellowship for a project on fusion energy research in France and the Soviet Union in which she will examine the narrative and imaginative strategies used by different actors to promote, criticize and interpret technological development. In April 2014, she organized a combined film festival and conference, "Tales from Planet Earth," as a cooperation between KTH’s newly-formed Environmental Humanities Laboratory and the Center for Culture, History and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin.
Seth Peabody is a graduate student at Harvard University’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, where he is working on a Ph.D. thesis on German "Mountain Films" of the Weimar Period. He has been affiliated with the Berkeley-Tübingen-Wien-Harvard, BTWH, research network on modernity in German culture since 2009, and spent the past year as a research fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. His research focuses on German cinema.
Hannes Bergthaller is associate professor at National Chung-Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, and currently an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at the University of Würzburg. He is the author of Populäre Ökologie: Zu Literatur und Geschichte der modernen Umweltbewegung in den USA, Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2007, and co-editor of Addressing Modernity: Social Systems Theory and US Cultures, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011; with Carsten Schinko. He is immediate past president of EASLCE and book review editor of the journal Ecozon@.
The book first considers the interplay between German film and environmental history in films and discourses of Heimat. Weimar-era films such as E. A. Dupont's Die Geierwally (1921), Carl Ludwig Achaz-Duisberg's Sprengbagger 1010 (1929), and Phil Jützi's Hunger in Waldenburg (1929) document and create a forum for discussing environmental change. The book then looks at film as a visual archive of and catalyst for infrastructure development, focusing on Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), the mountain films of Arnold Fanck, and the Berlin films Stadt der Millionen (Adolf Trotz, 1925), Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Walter Ruttmann, 1927), and Menschen am Sonntag (1930). Nazi-era and postwar films are also examined. By exploring German film history alongside environmental history and theory, this book provides a case study of the power of film within processes of environmental transformation.