OSL Seminar: ‘Writing Extinction and the Planetary Turn’

When and where: 26 September, 10 October, 24 October, 14 November, 28 November and 12 December 2024, 13:00-15:00. Utrecht University (exact venues to be shared with course participants).
Participation: This course is open to PhD Candidates and RMA students; OSL members will get priority access.
Credits: 5-6 EC. NB: Credits can only be awarded to humanities ReMA and PhD students from Dutch universities.
Organizer: Prof. Michael Boyden (Radboud University)

Registration will open on 2 September 2024 VIA THIS LINK

Growing awareness of the planet-wide metamorphoses set in motion by overexploitation, pollution, colonial expansion, and extractivism has spawned forms of cultural and literary production that engage in various ways with the theme of extinction. Artists and literary authors from both the Global North and South have developed narratives anticipating total extinction events, for instance through “last human” or “non-human future geologist” tropes. In this course, we explore this “planetary turn” in fiction and art. We will not only interrogate the affordances of specific forms to postulate futures of hopefulness and resilience in the face of planetary precarity, but also problematize narratives that center Euro-Western histories and experiences or that use deep temporalities to articulate exclusionary settler colonial emergency imaginaries. In addition, we will consider alternative cultural forms that highlight decolonial or other-than-human perspectives.

The series consists of six biweekly seminars, to be held between September and December 2024. The course will include a masterclass with professor David Sergeant, professor of English at the University of Plymouth and author of  The Near Future in 21st Century Fiction: Climate, Retreat and Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2023).