Lecture Series 2

Materiality of Air: Representation, Crisis, Health

Organized by Tatiana Konrad, University of Vienna

Mondays, 4.45-6.15 pm (CET)

March 11, 2024 – June 10, 2024

Drawing on perspectives from the environmental humanities, health humanities, cultural studies, literary studies, media studies, and history, this lecture series examines the materiality of air. It analyzes air through the lenses of representation, crisis, and well-being. Studying literature and culture, ecology and society, the lectures consider the complex relationships between humans, more-than-humans, and the environment more broadly. The lecture series also highlights future directions in engaging with the medium of air. One lecture will be delivered each week. Each lecture will be given by an invited expert, and will last for 45 minutes, followed by an enriching 45-minute question-and-answer session.

To receive the Zoom link, please email us at air.anglistik@univie.ac.at

This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/P34790]

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Date

TITLE

March 11, 2024
(Lecture  1)

Firewood: A Carbon Neutral Fuel, or
a Threat to Human Health?
(Gordon M. Sayre, University of Oregon)
March 18, 2024
(Lecture 2)
“Petro-Mama a Retrospective: What Air Quality Meant Then and What It Means Now”
(
Sheena Wilson, University of Alberta)
April 8, 2024
(Lecture 3)
“Indigenous Cultural Fire and
the Future of the Air We Breathe”
(Melinda Adams, The University of Kansas)
April 15, 2024
(Lecture 4)
The Inhumanities of Air: Technologies, Species, Health
(Olivia Banner, 
University of Washington)

April 22, 2024
(Lecture 5)

“Breathing through Sex Panics”
(Jean-Thomas Tremblay, York University)

April 29, 2024
(Lecture 6)

“In Search of Om: India’s Epidemic Intensities”
(
Bishnupriya Ghosh, University of California)

May 6, 2024
(Lecture 7)

“Creative-Critical Thoughts on Breath, Writing the Body, and Thinking through Air”
(Davina Quinlivan, University of Exeter)
May 13, 2024
(Lecture 8)
“Agentic Air: Ecological Poetry, More-than-Human Perspectives, and Intersectional Environmentalism
(Anna Selby, Independent Scholar)

May 27, 2024
(Lecture 9)

“Estranging Air in Ted Chiang’s ‘Exhalation’”
(Brent Ryan Bellamy, Trent University &
Ontario Tech University
)
June 3, 2024
(Lecture 10)
A Microbiological Menace: Killer Spores and Toxic Pollen in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
(Natalie Dederichs, University of Cologne)
June 10, 2024
(Lecture 11)
“Spores in the Air: Notes before the Next Pandemic”
(Arthur Rose, University of Exeter)

 

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the full program