Environmental Humanities Reading Group
2025-26 Reading Group
The Umwelt Center for Germanic Studies & Environmental Humanities invites participants from across the Arts and Sciences to a reading group exploring topics and approaches in the environmental humanities. Our theme for this academic year is Arctic Worlds. Meetings will take place monthly on Fridays 12:30-1:30, and lunch will be provided.
Our next meeting will take place on Friday, January 30, 12:30-1:30 in Hagerty Hall 488. We will discuss two timely articles that focus on Greenland: Amanda Boetzkes and Jeff Diamanti, “Geofetishism and the Tender Violence of Rare Earths,” SubStance, vol. 52, no, 3 (2023), pp. 9-30 & Amanda Boetzkes, “Climate Aesthetics in the Ablation Zone,” Afterimage, vol. 47, no. 2 (2020), pp. 35-39. (please contact us for access to texts).
Further meetings will take place on
- February 27
- March 27
- April 24
We hope that you will consider joining us. So that we can plan for a (vegan-friendly) lunch for all, please RSVP to Matthew Birkhold (birkhold.22@osu.edu) by noon on Thursday, January 29.
2024-25 Reading Group
The Umwelt Center for Germanic Studies & Environmental Humanities invites participants from across the Arts and Sciences to a reading group exploring topics and approaches in the environmental humanities. Our theme for this academic year will be Decomposition: Processes of Decay, Collapse, and Reorganization. Meetings will take place monthly on Fridays 12:30-1:30, and a vegan-friendly lunch will be provided.
As the year progresses, we hope that participants will suggest readings, so that our conversations reflect the diverse approaches to the environmental humanities being taken at Ohio State.
Meetings will take place on
- October 18 (excerpts from Judith Schalansky’s An Inventory of Losses (Verzeichnis einiger Verluste)
- November 22 (Eva Horn's "Challenges for an Aesthetics of the Anthropocene")
- January 24 (excerpts from Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures)
- February 21 (Caitlin DeSilvey’s “Observed Decay: Telling Stories with Mutable Things")
- April 11 (Jeff Orlowki's Chasing Coral)
Questions? Please contact Katra Byram (byram.4@osu.edu).