“What's the Role of Comedy in a Climate Crisis? Comedic Modes in Environmental Narratives” (Dr. Linda Heß)

Most North American environmental narratives, as well as environmental discourse in general, are and have been serious in tone. Nevertheless, “there exists a notable but underappreciated counter-tradition of environmentalist art that engages in modes including satire, irony, and comedy” (Seymour and Lioi 319). This counter-tradition is relevant particularly at present, when anxiety, grief, mourning, and apathy saturate environmental discourse as well as the genre of climate-fiction on the one hand, and the popularity of “new nature writing” reinvigorates reverence and awe in the face of nature on the other. In this presentation, I will present my current research project and speak about comedic modes’ capacity to productively deconstruct and reframe those grave and serious affects in ways that allow engagements with environmental discourses other than forms of despair or reverence.

Linda Heß has been a senior lecturer (akad. Rätin) in American Studies at the University of Augsburg since 2020. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Münster in 2016. In addition to the environmental humanities, her research interests are queer studies, aging studies, and humor studies.

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Der Vortrag findet wie gewohnt von 12-13 Uhr im WZU (Gebäude U) statt, Raum 101, Universitätsstr. 1a (innocube).

Das gesamte Programm mit allen Terminen finden Sie hier:

https://rethinking-environment-idk.de/wp-content/uploads/Green-Hour.pdf

Und hier erhalten Sie weitere Informationen zum Gesamtevent:

https://rethinking-environment-idk.de/event/the-green-hour-2025/