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Event

Semester: Summer term 2023

3.02.140 S Communicating Science - Engaging (with) Nature: Film & Television Documentaries and the Environment -  


Event date(s) | room

  • Mittwoch, 12.4.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 19.4.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 26.4.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 3.5.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 10.5.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 17.5.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 24.5.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 31.5.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 7.6.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 14.6.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 21.6.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 28.6.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 5.7.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028
  • Mittwoch, 12.7.2023 12:15 - 13:45 | A13 0-028

Description

Some of the earliest documentary films, such as In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914) and Nanook of the North (1922), explore the relationship between human beings and their natural environments. Both Head Hunters and Nanook are also (pseudo-)scientific films, (purported) ethnographic studies of "primitive" peoples. As such, they demonstrate the close interconnection between science and motion pictures--indeed, motion pictures became important tools of scientific observation and inquiry practically as soon as they were discovered.

In this seminar, we will explore ways in which documentary films frame (scientific) knowledge about nature, the environment, and humankind's varied relationships and entanglements with the natural world. In so doing, we will soon discover that films that seem to center on nature often say more about humans than the natural world they purport to represent.


Films likely to be discussed (selection):
Nanook of the North (1922)
The Living Desert (1953)
The Vanishing Prairie (1954)
Life on Earth (1979)
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009)
Life (2009)
Racing Extinction (2015)
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2017)

lecturer

Study fields

  • Studium generale / Gasthörstudium

SWS
2

Lehrsprache
englisch

Anzahl der freigegebenen Plätze für Gasthörende
2

Für Gasthörende / Studium generale geöffnet:
Ja

Hinweise zum Inhalt der Veranstaltung für Gasthörende
In this class, students will learn theoretical perspectives and critical approaches to examine literary texts from an ecocritical perspective in the context of the Anthropocene. The term Anthropocene refers to our present era of environmental destruction and crisis, in which human activities are said to amount to geological forces, the effects of which are experienced by different groups of humans and nonhumans in differing, and often highly unequal, ways. The course focuses on the genre of American and British (new) nature writing, a genre that, specifically in England, has undergone a remarkable renaissance during the past two decades. Considered as a genre that privileges the perspectives of white male explorers of the outdoors and a realistic mode of representation, our course begins with a complication of this view by first discussing an African American text – Eddy L. Harris’s Mississippi Solo (1988) – before we turn to two recent examples of the British new nature writing by an English male and a Scottish female writer respectively. Please purchase and read the following books (there is no preferred edition): Eddy L. Harris, Mississippi Solo (1988). Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places (2007). Kathleen Jamie, Sightlines (2012).

Hinweise zur Teilnahme für Gasthörende
Die Veranstaltung wird in englischer Sprache gehalten. Sichere Beherrschung des Englischen auf dem CEF-Niveau C1 ist erforderlich.

(Changed: 19 Jan 2024)  | 
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