2025 Workshop
Call for Papers
Decomposition: Processes of Decay, Collapse and Reorganization
The Umwelt Center for Germanic Studies & Environmental Humanities at the Ohio State University invites submissions for its 2025 Workshop, open to scholars of all ranks working in the fields of Germanic Studies and Environmental Humanities. We seek contributions that engage with decomposition and related processes and their function in German-speaking art, literature, philosophy, or public discourse.
We welcome submissions that are works in progress. Papers will be pre-circulated among participants to enable in-depth discussion and feedback during the workshop. We anticipate a peer-reviewed publication of finalized papers following the event .
The Umwelt Center will pay for travel and accommodation expenses for all presenters.
- Date: March 28-29, 2025
- Location: The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
The twenty-first century abounds with stories of decay and collapse: of social and political structures, species and populations, and climate, to name but a few. Without minimizing the dangers of this moment, this workshop aims to approach decay as part of a larger process and to think about decomposition and recomposition together. In Entangled Life. How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Merlin Sheldrake highlights the importance of the ongoing processes of decomposition to the world we inhabit: “Everything decays. We live and breathe in the space that decomposition leaves behind. If we could pause decomposition, starting now, the planet would pile up kilometres deep in bodies. We would think of it as a crisis, but from a fungal point of view it would be an enormous heap of opportunities” (173). In a biological sense, the term ‘decomposition’ describes the decay of organic matter into its component parts with the help of decomposers like fungi and bacteria, which not only degrade matter but also, in the very same process, reintroduce these component parts into the ecosystems in which they operate. While often negatively associated with death and rot, decomposition is a vital process to micro- and macrolevel ecosystems and their continuance, as it creates space for and provides nutrients to new organisms.
However, we can also envision decomposition differently: as a theoretical model in considering re-/configurations of natural or societal structures, as a philosophical or aesthetic concept, or as metaphor, for example. In this workshop, we will think through decomposition, but also about what follows. What does decomposition produce or leave behind?
We invite submissions that engage with processes of decay and decomposition (as well as the resulting recycling and reorganization) in relation to German-speaking discourse, including literature, film and other media, philosophy, history, and sociopolitical matters. We welcome contributions that engage with ‘decomposition’ from a variety of angles, including, but not limited to:
- decomposition and reorganization and their appearance and function in literary texts, art, or film
- decomposition as a theoretical concept or societal model
- aesthetics of decomposition, decay and/or reorganization
- decomposition as cultural or philosophical metaphor
- decomposition as scientific concept, history of the science of decomposition
- decomposition and nostalgia/decomposition and mourning
- decomposition and recomposition as threat/reorganization as renewal
Submission Instructions
Applicants should include a 250-300 word abstract, along with a short bibliography. If the paper is part of a larger project, it should be accompanied by a one-page outline of that project.
Applications are due on December 1, 2024.
If your application advances to the final stage of consideration, a complete draft of the paper will be due on March 1, 2025. Please do not apply if you will not be able to meet that deadline. Final submissions should be 7,500-15,000 words in length (including notes).
Applications should be sent as Microsoft Word files by December 1, 2024 to:
Anna-Maria Senuysal at senuysal.1@osu.edu. Please include your name, institutional affiliation (if any), and e-mail contact information in your covering email.
For more information, please contact the Umwelt Center Faculty Director Katra Byram at byram.4@osu.edu.