Alumna Antonia Mehnert Publishes Dissertation
25.01.2017
Alumna Antonia Mehnert's recently published dissertation, Climate Change Fictions, underscores the importance of the cultural sphere, and literature in particular, in representing and responding to climate change.
Drawing on a set of contemporary American texts, Mehnert explores how works of fiction convey climate change; how they tackle its challenging characteristics—the long-term temporal dimension, global scale, scientific controversy, and the disconnect between cause and effect; and which narrative techniques they employ in communicating this phenomenon.
The book moves beyond a purely ecocritical analysis, showing how climate change fictions constitute an insightful cultural repertoire valuable for discussion in the environmental humanities.