IPP WS: "Anthropocene Affordances: Scale, Narrative Form, and the Human in US-American Literature"
- https://www.uni-giessen.de/en/faculties/ggkgcsc/ggk-gcsc-calendar/summer-semester-2026/ipp/anthropocene-affordances
- IPP WS: "Anthropocene Affordances: Scale, Narrative Form, and the Human in US-American Literature"
- 2026-06-03T14:30:00+02:00
- 2026-06-03T16:00:00+02:00
Organized in cooperation with Research Area 9
"United States Geological Survey @Unsplash.com"
Abstract
In this workshop, I will present from my latest book, which proposes the concept of ‘Anthropocene affordances’ as a new methodological framework for analyzing narrative responses to the recent ecological crisis. I will outline the idea of Anthropocene affordances in relation to scale and narrative form, before analyzing two novels that critically discuss the conflicted role of the human in the Anthropocene through their particular uses of narrative form: Dale Pendell’s The Great Bay (2010) and Jenny Offill’s Weather (2020).
Bio
Lena Pfeifer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Würzburg, Germany. Her research interests are situated at the intersection of American Studies and the Environmental Humanities and include fictional and non-fictional environmental writing of the 20thand 21st centuries, new formalism, scale, as well as nuclear and energy narratives. Her first monograph, Anthropocene Affordances: Scale, Narrative Form, and the Human in US-American Literature, was published with transcript in 2025.
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