"The Madonna of Global Warming" (in weatherbeaten French church)
[Photo courtesy of French cli-fi writer Yann Quero]
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"Cli-Fi Novels and Movies:
Representations of Global Warming in American Literature"
Author: Antonia MEHNERT in Germany (US$80)
TEASER LINK: Table of Contents, Preview, Author Bio, Two Reviews
BIO: Dr Antonia Mehnert currently works in environmental communication and consulting for a Munich-based environmental project agency. She received her PhD from the Rachel Carson Center and the American Studies Department at the University of Munich, Germany. Her research interests include eco-criticism and climate change, Chicana/o studies, and the postcolonial Caribbean. She has published various articles on cli-fi in academic, as well as non-academic journals, and is the co-founder of EASLCE’s postgraduate forum “Environment, Literature, Culture” (ELC).
BULLET: Her new nonfiction academic book brings together a wide breadth of source material including film and literary works by Barbara Kingsolver, T.C. Boyle, Kim Stanley Robinson, and others.
BULLET: Sets a theoretical trend by identifying and discussing in-depth some of fundamental conceptual challenges that man-made climate change poses for novelists and scriptwriters.
BULLET: Opens new pathways of inquiry that go beyond a solely eco-critical discussion and will apply to scholars within the environmental humanities at-large.
BULLET: This book highlights the importance of the cultural sphere, and in particular literature, in response and discussion with the unprecedented phenomenon known as man-made climate change. Antonia Mehnert turns to a set of contemporary American works of fiction, reading them as a unique response to the challenges of representing climate change. She draws on “climate change fiction”— texts dealing explicitly with anthropogenic climate change—and explores how these works convey climate change, deal with its challenging characteristics, and with what narrative techniques they ultimately participate in its communication. Indeed, a number of challenging traits make climate change a difficult issue to engage with including its slow and long temporal dimension, global scale, scientific controversy, and its disconnect between cause and effect. Considering such complexity and uncertainty at the source of climate change fictions, this book moves beyond a solely ecocritical analysis and shows how these climate change fictions constitute an insightful cultural repertoire valuable for discussion in the environmental humanities in general.
Table of contents (8 chapters)
B
Introduction: Imagining Climate Change Futures
Mehnert, Antonia
Pages 1-20B
Cli-fI in Context: Socio-Politics, Environmental Discourse and Literature
Mehnert, Antonia
Pages 21-52C
Scaling Climate Change: The Transformation of Place in Cli-Fi Novels
Mehnert, Antonia
Pages 53-91C
Reimagining Time in Cli-Fi Novels
Mehnert, Antonia
Pages 93-126C
Manufactured Uncertainty: Climate Risks in an Age of “Heightened Security”
Mehnert, Antonia
Pages 127-148C
Climate Cultures in Kim Stanley Robinson’s cli-fi novel ''NEW YORK 2140''
Mehnert, Antonia
Pages 149-181C
Representing the Underrepresented: Climate Justice and Future Responsibilities in Cli-Fi Novels and Movies
Mehnert, Antonia
Pages 183-219C
Conclusion: Cli-fi and the Introduction of New Subgenres in Environmental Crisis Discourse
Mehnert, Antonia Mehnert
REVIEW: “A vital contribution to the discussion of the Anthrocene within the environmental humanities, this timely study takes seriously both the cultural phenomenon and material reality of climate change. It offers a lucid and compelling guide to the booming genre of ‘cli-fi’ as well as presenting more just and resilient futures for the planet. ''Climate Change Fictions'' is indispensable reading for scholars and students in ecocriticism and environmental studies.” -- (Janet Fiskio, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Comparative American Studies, Oberlin College, USA)
REVIEW: “Cli-fi is set to become a signature genre of the 21st century, and this new study explains its social significance with refreshing clarity. Writing at the cutting edge of a field in which theorists have sometimes pushed the boundaries of comprehensibility with fashionable abstractions, Mehnert wears her erudition lightly, arguing from palpable concern for the future, and with persuasive conviction in the power of creative writing to raise awareness and shape debates. This is literary criticism at its best: intellectually exciting in charting the part played by narratives and images in framing environmental discourse, and insightful in the close readings of American cli-fi novels selected for their re-imagination of space, time, risk, and environmental justice. As Mehnert eloquently argues, cli-fi is indispensable as a realm in which we can imagine ourselves as part of a planetary system of belonging.” (Axel Goodbody, Professor of German Studies and European Culture, University of Bath, UK)
BIO: Dr Antonia Mehnert currently works in environmental communication and consulting for a Munich-based environmental project agency. She received her PhD from the Rachel Carson Center and the American Studies Department at the University of Munich, Germany. Her research interests include eco-criticism and climate change, Chicana/o studies, and the postcolonial Caribbean. She has published various articles on cli-fi in academic, as well as non-academic journals, and is the co-founder of EASLCE’s postgraduate forum “Environment, Literature, Culture” (ELC).
https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319403366
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