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Literary and cultural texts are essential in shaping emotional and intellectual dispositions toward the human potential for a sustainable transformation of society. Due to its appeal to the human imagination and human empathy, literature can enable readers for sophisticated understandings of social and ecological justice. An overabundance of catastrophic near future scenarios largely prevents imagining the necessary transition toward a socially responsible and ecologically mindful future as a non-violent and non-disastrous process. The paper argues that transition stories that narrate the rebuilding of the world in the midst of crisis are much better instruments in bringing about a human “mindshift” (Göpel) than disaster stories. Transition stories, among them the Parable novels by Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020), offer feasible ideas about how to orchestrate economic and social change. The analysis of recent American, Canadian, British, and German near future novels—both adult and young adult fictions—sheds light on those aspects best suited for effecting behavioral change in recipients’ minds: exemplary ecologically sustainable characters and actions, companion quests, cooperative communities, sources of epistemological innovation and spiritual resilience, and an ethics and aesthetics of repair.
Gesa Mackenthun. Sustainable Stories: Managing Climate Change with Literature. Sustainability 2021, 13, 4049 .
AMA StyleGesa Mackenthun. Sustainable Stories: Managing Climate Change with Literature. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (7):4049.
Chicago/Turabian StyleGesa Mackenthun. 2021. "Sustainable Stories: Managing Climate Change with Literature." Sustainability 13, no. 7: 4049.
Gesa Mackenthun. The Routledge Research Companion to Travel Writing. Studies in Travel Writing 2019, 23, 402 -405.
AMA StyleGesa Mackenthun. The Routledge Research Companion to Travel Writing. Studies in Travel Writing. 2019; 23 (4):402-405.
Chicago/Turabian StyleGesa Mackenthun. 2019. "The Routledge Research Companion to Travel Writing." Studies in Travel Writing 23, no. 4: 402-405.
The presidency of Donald Trump has occasioned critical repercussions within the field of American Studies around the world. This piece is a response from Germany: a country marked by the historical experiences of fascism and a socialist surveillance state, but a country that, in spite of the liberal pluralistic consensus that grew out of these historical traumata, now has to face a similar development as other Western countries: the rise of new forms of nationalist parochialism, racism coupled with white patriarchal nostalgia and a militant anti-humanism. The rise of a new right, the piece argues, must be regarded as the manifestation of deep insecurities about individual and collective identities which are increasingly defined not on the basis of achievement but on the basis of inheritance. Remembering an instance of ‘hospitality toward a stranger’ in 1979 California, the essay evokes the spirit of cosmopolitanism which, though currently under fierce attack, continues to thrive in the United States, thanks to the commitment of local civil actors, and which needs to be defended by comparatively minded American Studies scholars.
Gesa Mackenthun. In the Streets of San Francisco. Comparative American Studies An International Journal 2017, 15, 7 -11.
AMA StyleGesa Mackenthun. In the Streets of San Francisco. Comparative American Studies An International Journal. 2017; 15 (1-2):7-11.
Chicago/Turabian StyleGesa Mackenthun. 2017. "In the Streets of San Francisco." Comparative American Studies An International Journal 15, no. 1-2: 7-11.
Cet article montre comment le Moi-Regard impérial (I/eye) du discours colonial sur l’Amérique a tendance à occulter la présence des habitants indigènes de façon à contempler en solitaire le spectacle de la nature vierge. Il explique comment depuis les premiers documents qui relatent la rencontre des Européens avec l’Amérique, des représentations ‘déshumanisantes’ du paysage américain involontairement reproduisent le trope colonial du vacuum domicilium, de la terre vide. Cependant, le trope de la ‘terre vierge’ s’accorde difficilement avec les descriptions et la recherche des indigènes pré-colombiens ainsi qu’avec l’étude des vestiges qu’ils nous laissés. Le désir impérial d’appropriation des terres vierges s’accompagnait d’une fascination scientifique et romantique pour la ‘préhistoire’ du continent qui devait résulter de l’étude des vestiges architecturaux des grandes colonies de peuplement le long de l’Ohio et du Mississipi en Louisiane et dans l’Amérique centrale. Cet article analyse quelques exemples de cette représentation de la terre en décrivant, dans un premier temps, le trope de la mystérieuse cité en ruines attendant d’être découverte au milieu de la jungle américaine, puis en étudiant le travail culturel du trope impérial dans deux textes de fiction sur l’Ouest américain.
Gesa Mackenthun. Hidden Cities in the American Wilderness : The Cultural Work of a Romantic Trope. Miranda 2015, 1 .
AMA StyleGesa Mackenthun. Hidden Cities in the American Wilderness : The Cultural Work of a Romantic Trope. Miranda. 2015; (11):1.
Chicago/Turabian StyleGesa Mackenthun. 2015. "Hidden Cities in the American Wilderness : The Cultural Work of a Romantic Trope." Miranda , no. 11: 1.