Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures University of Toronto
12 March 2020, 4 pm, Odette Hall 323
As an authoritarian regime, the East German government lacked transparency on themes such as environmental and atmospheric pollution, and the consequences of harmful industries that were common practice throughout the country’s existence. GDR activists and intellectuals, however, managed to integrate a discussion on harmful industries in their work, and raised awareness on environmental issues as early as the 1970s. East German literary works that highlight environmental issues, have not yet been explored in a significant way from the perspective of the more recent scholarly efforts to conceptualize the Anthropocene. The use of an ecocritical framework (dark ecology and material ecocriticism among others) will help me revitalize and reenergize GDR scholarship, which has been focused on issues such as the precise nature of GDR socialism as repressive political formation within the Cold War context. This approach will then help reconnect the study of East German culture, society and politics to global issues that affect us all.
In this presentation, I will explore the works of (East) German author Christa Wolf, more specifically her post-Chernobyl novella Störfall: Nachrichten eines Tages (1987), who expressed concerns through her literary works regarding the promotion and exploitation of highly polluting industries in the GDR, the Eastern Bloc and the West.
Laurence Côté-Pitre is a PhD candidate in the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures at the University of Toronto.
If you have any accommodation needs, please e-mail german@chass.utoronto.ca, and we will do our best to assist you.