Solvejg Nitzke

This book analyzes how trees act as mediators of interspecies relationships in popular science writing and creative nonfiction. Making Kin with Trees argues that trees emerge as agents of “arboreal poetics” shaping not only fictional but also material interactions. Following how speculative care practices infuse scientific and poetic texts, formatting practices of reading, sensing, knowing, and communicating (with) trees while affirming both cultural and scientific meaning making processes. This book shows how arboreal thinking connects and might ultimately require breaking down the barrier between fact and fiction, human and plant, onlooker and artwork. This book will be of interest to audiences based in fields including environmental humanities, science and technology studies and ecocriticism, and everyone engaged in science communication and interested in the relationship between scientific fact and narrative.

A Cultural Poetics of Interspecies Care

Making Kin with Trees

Nicolas Pethes

While concepts of Earth have a rich tradition, more recent examples show a distinct quality: Though ideas of wholeness might still be related to mythical, religious, or utopian visions of the past, "Earth" itself has become available as a whole. This raises several questions: How are the notions of one Earth or our Planet imagined and distributed? What is the role of cultural imagination and practices of signification in the imagination of "the Earth"? Which theoretical models can be used or need to be developed to describe processes of imagining Planet Earth? This collection invites a wide range of perspectives from different fields of the Humanities to explore the means of imagining Earth.

Concepts of Wholeness in Cultural Constructions of Our Home Planet

Imagining Earth

Nils Jablonski

Die Idylle ist allgegenwärtig: Unabhängig von der literarischen Gattung finden sich ihre Elemente sowohl in unterschiedlichen textuellen Formationen als auch in anderen kulturellen Artefakten sowie der Alltagskultur. Aktuelle Phänomene wie z.B. das Wiedererstarken von Nationalismen, die Sehnsucht nach dem »einfachen Leben« oder das Verhältnis von Mensch und Umwelt sind in spezifischer Weise mit idyllischen Motiven, Topoi oder Deutungsmustern verbunden. Die Aufsätze dieses Bandes werfen einen kulturwissenschaftlichen Blick auf die vier paradigmatischen Bereiche Ökologie, Ökonomie, Artikulation und Gemeinschaft. Sie untersuchen, wie idyllisierende Verfahren in unterschiedlichen historischen Kontexten zum Einsatz kommen, um Ordnungen, Naturverhältnisse und Diskurse zu strukturieren. Dabei entwickeln sie kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf aktuelle Debatten, die die zentrale Rolle der Idylle als Wunsch- und Gegenbild kritisch in den Blick nehmen.

Solvejg Nitzke

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