Dr. Antonia Mehnert

Antonia Mehnert studied American Studies, Latin-American studies and Economics at the University of Potsdam and the Free University of Berlin. During this time she also completed a semester at the University of Seville, Spain and spent several months in the United States and Argentina for various internships with cultural and political organizations. After her graduation she worked as a project coordinator for “culture and development.” In January 2011 she began to work on her dissertation project, entitled “Climate Change Imaginaries,” as a PhD candidate in the American Studies Department at the University of Potsdam, but then transferred to Munich in order to participate in the doctoral program “Environment and Society” (Rachel Carson Center/LMU). Furthermore, she spent the summer semester 2012 as a visiting PhD student at UC Davis (Mellon Research Initiative “Environments & Societies: History, Literature, and Justice”). Her research interests include climate change fiction, ecocriticism, Chicano/a studies, the postcolonial Caribbean, and transnationalism. Her dissertation project was supported by a scholarship from the Foundation of German Business.

Dissertation abstract: Climate Change Fictions: Representations of Global Warming in American Literature (pdf, 40KB)

Publications:

Climate Change Futures and the Imagination of the Global in Maeva! by Dirk C. Fleck, in: European Journal of Literature, Culture, and Environment 4.1. (2012), 23-35.

"'Ou libéré?' Transnational Trauma in Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat", in: Antonia Mehnert/Stephanie Siewert (Hrsg.): The Morbidity of Culture. Melancholy, Trauma, Illness and Dying in Literature and Film, Frankfurt 2012, 37-51.

Building Bridges between Art and Society in Latin America. Latin American Network of Art for Social Transformation, in: Mapping Cultural Diversity. Good Practices from Around the Globe, hrsg. v. German Commission for UNESCO (DUK)/ Asias-Europe Foundation, Bonn 2010, 64-66.

With Gregers Andersen, "Der Held und das Wetter - Literatur und Klimawandel." Goethe Institut (Nov 2013): http://www.goethe.de/ges/umw/prj/kuk/the/kun/de11224083.htm

"Things We Didn't See Coming --Riskscapes in Climate Change Fiction." The Anticipation of Catastrophe. Ed. Sylvia Mayer/Alexa Weik von Mossner. Heidelberg: Winter, 2014.

Conference Presentations:

BIFAS Bayreuth: "From Roots to Routes – Riskscapes in Climate Change Fiction" (Poster)

ASLE (Kansas)

1)"From Roots to Routes – Riskscapes in Climate Change Fiction" (Paper)

2)"'Back to the Future' - Re-imagining Time in T.C. Boyle’s A Friend of the Earth" (workshop)

EASLCE: Climate Change Fiction and the Re-telling of Environmental Time

DGfA: "'The World is Beating a Path to Your Door': Climate Change, Butterflies and Ethical Glocalism in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior"

MofM: "Strange Flight Behavior: Climate Change, Butterflies, and Eco-Cosmopolitanism in Barbara Kingsolver’s latest Cli-fi Novel"