Depicting the magical as an intrinsic part of storytelling, legends, folk tales, and myths function as a source of inspiration for contemporary speculative fiction, which has been capitalizing on magical creatures such as dragons, mermaids, and fairies. However, over the last two decades, the mainly Eurocentric, Westernized perspectives of these texts have been complemented and challenged by indigenous and postcolonial writers with figures such as Maui, Orisa, and Mami Wata, which embody the close relationship of their respective communities with nature and the environment. Situated at the intersection of literary and cultural studies, this PhD project seeks to analyze contemporary novels, poems, short stories, and movies that portray magical and mythological water figures in Anglophone speculative eco-fiction through the lenses of postcolonial, posthumanist, and ecocritical theories and approaches. In ecocriticism, scholars have produced an extensive body of research mostly dealing with well-known literary texts from North America and Great Britain or a particular region of the Global South. This thesis aims to transgress and dismantle such boundaries or specifications by setting a broader, cross-regional comparative framework and approach to highlight the global context of anthropogenic climate change. Reading across these culturally diverse literary landscapes, texts from the three regions of the Great Lakes in North America, West Africa, and the Pacific Ocean are discussed as to how nature and humans as well as more-than-human beings are depicted, and how these texts establish a sustainable relationship through learning about mythologies. The project thus aims to delineate the cultural importance of these magical and mythological figures for and across these regions, discerning the functions of the return of the magical in the context of eco-fiction.

• Ecocriticism & Ecofiction
• Indigenous Studies
• (West and Southern) African Anglophone Literatures
• Cultural Studies
• Pacific & Caribbean Literatures
• Climate Change Fiction

Conferences

• 05/09/2024 – 07/09/2024: University of Kassel: GfF 2024: Fantastic Climates – “Navigating Otherworldly Landscapes: A Comparative Analysis of Environmental Degradation, Indigenous Mythology, and Magical Resilience in Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves and Darcy Little Badger's A Snake Falls to Earth”
• 09/05/2024 – 11/05/2024, University of Zürich: GAPS 2024: Post/Colonial Environments – “Mythological and Magical Figures in Rae Mariz’ Hawaiian Climate Fantasy Weird Fishes”