About this Event
Professor Eva Horn (Institut für Germanistik, Univeristy of Vienna)
The Speaker:
Eva Horn is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on literature and art in the age of the Anthropocene; climate literature; modelling the future in literature and science; narratives of catastrophe; political secrets, conspiracy, treason. She is author of The Future as Catastrophe. Imagining Disaster in the Modern Age, New York: Columbia University Press 2018, with Hannes Bergthaller: The Anthropocene. Key Issues for the Humanities, New York/London: Routledge 2019; The Secret War. Treason, Espionage, and Modern Fiction, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 2013.
The Talk:
Current conceptualizations of climate and climate change are dominated by the abstract idea of climate as “the average weather.” This scientific understanding, I will argue, must be complemented by a cultural concept of climate which has a long tradition from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. In order to understand what it means to „be in the air“ culturally, politically, and medically, we need a cultural understanding of climate as an environment. My talk will give a few historical and literary examples of what it might mean to understand the air from the inside, as an element of individual, social, and cultural life.
Venue: HI Seminar Room H204 (top floor)
Please note, attendees will need to provide proof of vaccination or have recovered from Covid 19 within the last six months and event booking confirmation will be required to attend the event.
Photo credit: Helmut Grünbichler (copyright Eva Horn)
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
UCD Humanities Institute Ireland, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
EUR 0.00