Aging Studies and Ecocriticism: Interdisciplinary Encounters
Edited by Nassim W. Balestrini, Julia Hoydis, Anna-Christina Kainradl, and Ulla Kriebernegg. Lexington 2023.
Aging Studies and Ecocriticism: Interdisciplinary Encounters argues that both aging studies and ecocriticism address the complex dynamics of individual and collective agency, oppression and dependency, care and conviviality, vulnerability and resistance as well as intergenerationality and responsibility. Yet, even though both fields employ overlapping methodologies and theoretical frameworks and scrutinize “boundary texts” in different literary genres, which have been analyzed from ecocritical perspectives as well as from the vantage point of critical aging studies, there has been little scholarly interaction between ecocritical literary studies and aging studies to date. The contributors in this volume demonstrate the potential of specific genres to narrate relationality and age, and the aesthetic and ethical challenges of imagining changes, endings, and survival in the Anthropocene. As the first step towards putting both fields in conversation, this collection offers new pathways into understanding human and nonhuman ecological relations.
Projekte
The project “European Societal Challenges in German Culture: Exploring Ageing and Climate Change in Tandem” (2025-2026), based at the Centre for European Studies, is co-led by CEUROS director Dr Michaela Schrage-Früh (Associate Professor in German, UL) and Dr Tina-Karen Pusse (Associate Professor in German, University of Galway).
The research team comprising sixteen researchers from Ireland, the UK, Germany, and Austria explores cultural responses to current societal challenges, with particular focus on population ageing and climate change. In media across Europe, population ageing is often depicted as a ‘burden narrative’, couched in metaphors of natural disaster such as the ‘silver tsunami’, while the impending climate catastrophe is frequently presented in terms of a generational war.
Accordingly, this project seeks to analyse how both challenges are intertwined in German cultural representations in a comparative European context and explore in how far they confirm or challenge binary opposition based on chronological age. Besides a symposium, a book publication with co-authored chapters, and a website with an open access database, the project will entail a series of readings, roundtables, and a creative competition for undergraduate students.
More information: https://ageing-and-climate-change-in-german-culture.com/about/
FWF-Projekt (Projektnummer I 6655)
Projektdauer 01.06.2023 - 31.05.2026
Bewilligungssumme 206.256 €
In dem internationalen Forschungsprojekt "Just Futures?", geleitet von Prof. Dr. Julia Hoydis und Prof. Dr. David Higgins, geht es darum, welche Zukunftsbilder Menschen im Kontext der Klimakrise entwickeln. Das Projekt, gefördert mit insgesamt 750.000 Euro, zielt darauf ab, geisteswissenschaftliche Perspektiven in die Klimaforschung einzubringen und die Wahrnehmung von Generationenkonflikten sowie generationengerechtem Handeln zu beleuchten. Die Projektgruppe bringt Literaturwissenschaft, Linguistik, Science and Technology Studies und Fachdidaktik zusammen, um zu untersuchen, wie sich verschiedene Textarten, d.h. kulturelle Formen wie Literatur, soziale Medien sowie Lehrmaterialien, zwischen deskriptiven Aussagen zum Klimawandel ("Modelle von") und normativen Folgerungen ("Modelle für") bewegen. Durch den interdisziplinären Ansatz sollen innovativen Methoden zur Analyse von Zukunftsvorstellungen entwickelt werden, die auch für andere Fachbereiche von Bedeutung sind.
Projektwebseite: https://www.cultural-climate-models.org/
Publikationen
Univ.-Prof. Dr.phil. Nassim W. Balestrini
Balestrini, Nassim Winnie. “Sound Arguments: Reflections on the Sonic in Climate Change Drama.” In: Martin Butler, Julius Greve, et al. (Hg.): American Soundscapes. Heidelberg. Winter. 2026.
Balestrini, Nassim Winnie. “Ice and Rising Waters in North American Climate Change Drama.” In: Ursula Kluwick and Virginia Richter (Hg.): Handbook of Littoral Studies. Berlin. De Gruyter. 2026.
Balestrini, Nassim Winnie. “Sensing a Twenty-First-Century Commons in the Theater: Relationality in a Climate of Distrust and Destruction.” In: Journal of Contemporary Drama in English. 12,1. 2024. 14-33. doi:10.1515/jcde-2024-2001.
Balestrini, Nassim Winnie. “Aesthetic Innovation and Activist Impetus in Climate Change Theater: Beyond a New Formalist Reading of Chantal Bildoeau’s One-Actor Play No More Harveys (2022).” In: JAAAS: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies. 5,2. 2024. 182-203. doi:10.47060/jaaas.v5i2.191.
Balestrini, Nassim Winnie. “The Polymedial Aesthetics of Climate Change Drama.” In: Debra J. Rosenthal (Hg.): Teaching the Literature of Climate Change. New York. Modern Language Association. 2024. 113-122.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Julia Hoydis
Hoydis, Julia, and Roman Bartosch. “Experience and Extinction in Eco-Games.” In: Ursula Heise, Kate Rigby, and Roman Bartosch (Hg.): Unsettling Extinction. London: Bloomsbury (forthcoming 2026, in print).
Hoydis, Julia, and Roman Bartosch. “Climate Fiction as Future-Making: Narrative and Cultural Modelling Beyond Representation.” Future Humanities (2025). https://doi.org/10.1002/fhu2.70008.
Hoydis, Julia. “Caring (for) Futures: Intergenerational Justice in Contemporary British Drama.” In: Nassim W. Balestrini, Julia Hoydis, Anna-Christina Kainradl, Ulla Kriebernegg (Hg.): Aging Studies and Ecocriticism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2023. 147-164.
Bartosch, Roman, Dany Adone, Julia Hoydis, Kirk Junker, Shamita Kumar, and Kate Rigby. “Zukunftsgestaltungskompetenz im Angesicht der Katastrophe. Ecological Literacy als mehrdimensionale Herausforderung.” In: Gerhard Brandhofer, Erwin Rauscher, und Carmen Sippl (Hg.): Futures Literacy. Zukunft lehren und lernen. Pädagogik für Niederösterreich Bd. 27. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2023. 111-122. OA: https://pub.ph-noe.ac.at/id/eprint/16/1/Sippl%20et%20al%202023%20Futures%20Literacy.pdf.
Hoydis, Julia. “Posthumanism and Drama: From Shakespeare to Climate Change Plays.” In: Stefan Herbrechter et al. (Hg.) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism. Springer, 2022. 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42681-1_38-1.
Hoydis, Julia. “Literature and Interdisciplinary (Health) Risk Research. Of Boundary Objects, Thought Styles, and Narratives of Uncertainty.” Special Issue ‘Focus on Perspectives on Literature and Interdisciplinarity.’ In: Jens M. Gurr and Ursula Kluwick (Hg.): Anglistik 32.3 (2021): 87-102. https://doi.org/10.33675/ANGL/2021/3/9.
Univ.-Prof. Dr.phil. Mag. Ulla Kriebernegg
Kriebernegg, Ulla. Putting Age in Its Place: Long-Term Residential Care in Contemporary Film and Fiction. Bielefeld: Transcript 2026.
Kriebernegg, Ulla, and Jason Danely. "Geronticide". No Future Lexicon. Public Books. 2025.
Kainradl, Anna-Christina, and Kriebernegg, Ulla. “Narratives of Old Age and Climate Change: Silver Tsunamis and Rising Tides.” In: Sarah Falcus, Heike Hartung, Raquel Medina (Hg.): The Bloomsbury Handbook to Ageing in Contemporary Literature and Film. New York. Bloomsbury. 2023. 269-279. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bloomsbury-handbook-to-ageing-in-contemporary-literature-and-film-9781350212213/.
Kainradl, Anna-Christina, and Kriebernegg, Ulla: “Die alten Klimasünder:innen – der Klimawandeldiskurs als Generationenkonflikt.” Graz. CPD policy blog. 2022. https://policyblog.empowermentforpeace.org/2022/02/die-alten-klimasunderinnen-der-klimawandeldiskurs-als-generationenkonflikt/.
Kainradl, Anna-Christina, and Kriebernegg, Ulla “They say we messed it up. Killing the planet with our own greed”: Alternswissenschaftliche Überlegungen zu einem generationengerechten Klimadiskurs in Margaret Atwoods “Torching the Dusties”. In: LIMINA - Grazer theologische Perspektiven. 3,1. 2020. 166 - 191. https://www.limina-graz.eu/index.php/limina/article/view/70.