It has long been clear that climate change is such a far-reaching problem that all academic disciplines must play a part in addressing it. However, it may not be immediately obvious what literary studies can contribute in this regard. To address this, Prof. Dr. Julia Hoydis (English literature scholar, currently at the University of Graz), Prof. Dr. Roman Bartosch (literature educator, University of Cologne), and Prof. Dr. Jens Martin Gurr (English scholar at the University of Duisburg-Essen) have just secured a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation, Germany’s largest private foundation for the promotion of science.
Project leader Julia Hoydis explains: “The ‘Suspected Originality’ funding program is a perfect fit for our project. By venturing off the beaten path, individual researchers or small project teams can develop and test new theories, concepts, or approaches and present them for discussion in an essay or a collaborative book.” In recent years, fewer than 10% of applications have typically been approved under this funding line. The three researchers’ “Climate Change Literacy” project has now been selected and will receive approximately €140,000 in funding for 12 months starting in October 2021. The funding will primarily support research semesters, thereby providing valuable time for collaborative thinking and writing. Roman Bartosch explains: “Against the backdrop of a purely scientific narrowing of the term ‘literacy’ to a competent handling of data, we want to show how important a broader understanding of ‘literacy’—literally ‘reading ability’—is, one that also incorporates cultural studies and, ultimately, literary didactics. We also aim to contribute to the rapidly growing field of interdisciplinary climate change research.””The project thus responds to the urgent scientific and political calls to address the challenges of climate change and its embeddedness in complex individual, social, and cultural contexts. Jens Martin Gurr explains: ‘A central problem is that, in theory, we all know we have to act—and we also know what needs to be done. But as individuals, we experience climate change as such a vast, complex, and—at least for now—often abstract phenomenon. And as individuals, we often feel that our personal contribution doesn’t really matter.” To this end, the project is developing a new understanding of “climate change literacy” based on a reassessment of the possibilities and contributions of literature. The collaboration between literary studies, cultural studies, and literary pedagogy has the potential to yield important insights into the role of stories and the courses of action they inspire.
Contact for questions:
Prof. Dr. Julia Hoydis
julia.hoydis@uni-due.de
