Oceans and Deserts 2017:
Charting Transdisciplinary Currents in Environment and Culture
ENR2, Agnese Nelms Haury Hall, S107
Please register for the conference here (it's free and open to the public).
Conference Art Exhibition: Maria Johnson (Prescott College), “Sea, Desert, Dreams”
Friday, March 31
9-9:15AM Opening Remarks: Jesse Archbold
9:15-10:45AM Panel I: Traveling Oceans and Deserts
Moderator: Kyung Lee Gagum
James Howell (University of Arizona), “Reintroducing a Hero: Alexander von Humboldt in Contemporary German Children's Literature”
Adam Merki (Vanderbilt University), “Between Terra Australis and die weiße Wüste: Philosophy and Social Criticism from Georg Forster’s Reise um die Welt to Christoph Ransmayr’s Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis”
Julian Gärtner (University of Cincinnati), “Flowers of a Snowy White: Space in Gustav Frenssen's Novel Fahrt nach Südwest”
10:45-11AM Break
11-12PM Keynote Address I
Moderator: Hayden Godfrey
Simon Richter (University of Pennsylvania), “Forget Noah: Ark-Thinking and the (In)Hospitality of the Sea”
12-1:45PM Lunch Break
1:45-2:45PM Panel II: Flowing Oceans and Deserts
Moderator: Lydia Heiss
Aurora Romero (Vanderbilt University), “Aquatic Mythology: Heinrich Heine and Annette Droste-Hülshoff in the work of Rose Ausländer”
Brian McDermott (Brigham Young University Idaho), “Schlauchboot: Experiences Teaching Illiterate Refugees the Syllabic Method in Heidelberg, Germany”
3-5PM Coast Lines Exhibit at the University of Arizona Museum of Art
How do you map your way to the ocean? How can we better understand and respond to the messy webs of environmental, economic, and cultural lifeways traveling its currents? Join the curators of the University of Arizona Museum of Art's Coast Lines exhibit (who double as MFA candidates in UA's Creative Writing department) for an afternoon of collaborative creative writing activities. We'll respond to Coast Lines art works and riff with one another, charting and multiplying the imaginative paths from here to water. Participants will have the opportunity to contribute work to the Coast Lines show blog and to a limited-run publication alongside Tucson-area writers.
5:30-8PM Fisch Out of Water: Floods of Poetry & Des(s)ert at Delectables
Featuring readings by Writer-in-Residence Christopher Kloeble and Poet & Professor Christopher Cokinos
Saturday, April 1
9:30-10:30AM Keynote Address II
Moderator: Amanda Snell
Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona), “The Myth of Melusine and Her Sisters: Archetypal Water and Literature”
10:30-10:45AM Break
10:45-11:45AM Panel III: Growing Oceans and Deserts
Moderator: Stephanie Della Cella
Jackson Bierfeldt (University of Chicago), “Völkisch Ecology: The Scientific and Spiritual Rhetoric of Forests and Deserts around 1920”
Jessi Long (University of Arizona), “Into the Woods: Jews and Judaism Represented with the Forest in the German Context”
11:45-2:00PM Lunch Break
2-3PM Panel IV: Alienating Oceans and Deserts
Moderator: Trez Norwood
Jesse Archbold (University of Arizona), “Depicting the Military Other in Vor dem Fest”
Thomas David (University of Minnesota), “The Future is Now: Environmental Catastrophe and Political Crisis on Kairos”
3-3:15PM Break
3:15-4:15PM Panel V: Investing Oceans and Deserts
Moderator: Jessi Long
Katharina Maria Essmeyer (University of Arizona), “The Financing of Dark Networks: Terror-Crime Connectivity in Fragile States”
David Brady (Austin Nature & Science Center), “Central Texas’ Conservation Drought”
4:15- 4:30PM Closing Remarks: Stephanie Della Cella
6PM Dinner Opportunity at Sinbad's
Sponsored by the Confluencenter, the Graduate & Professional Student Council, the Department of German Studies, and a Faculty/Student Interaction Grant.
