Scale (GSA 2020)

German Studies Association
Oct. 1-4, 2020 in Washington, DC

“Scale”
GSA Environmental Studies Network
Abstracts due Jan. 31, 2020

The Environmental Studies Network invites submissions for a series of panels for the GSA 2020, taking place October 1-4, 2020 in Washington, DC.

We invite submissions for a series of panels entitled "Scale” that engage with concepts of scale in respect to environmental questions in German-speaking cultures. Panels could consider ways of investigating environmental scale on the micro- or macro-level, such as microplastics, microscopic organisms, and the molecular/atomic dimension, or massive mountains, the expanses of outer space and human history, and the nearly unimaginable scale of destruction that climate change will entail. Papers might ask how a focus on the huge or tiny suggests different objects of narration, impacts storytelling and visual perception, or proposes new models for understanding history. Zooming in or out might re-conceptualize the relations of space and time, and a view to the dimensions of big/small, long/short, broad/specific, up/down in the realms of nature, environment, and species might alter how humans understand the self and relate to the other.
 

Please send 250-500 word abstracts for individual papers or full panels, with CVs and AV requests by Wednesday, January 31, 2020 to all three Environmental Studies Network coordinators:

Timothy Brown ti.brown@neu.edu
Joela Jacobs joelajacobs@email.arizona.edu 

Stephen Milder s.h.milder@rug.nl

Presenters must be members of the German Studies Association. 

Information on membership is available on the GSA website: www.thegsa.org

The Environmental Studies Network, founded in 2012 within the German Studies Association, promotes interdisciplinary ecocritical approaches to environmental issues through cultural, digital, historical, literary, historical, and visual studies. Scholars within the Environmental Studies Network are keenly interested in examining how these areas of study, which include political and philosophical questions drawn from deep ecology, ecofeminism, environmental justice, “new materialism,” and the Anthropocene, might inform our understanding of German studies. The German Studies Environmental Studies Network welcomes debate and dialogue with the natural sciences and policy studies. Indeed, it is our goal to show that environmental problems are always already both cultural and scientific. You are invited to join the network’s listserv: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gsa-environmental-studies-network/join