Online Workshop: "The Nuclear Age, Redux: Forms and Modes of Environmental Change"

Organized by Lena Pfeifer (Würzburg) and Annika Schadewaldt (Leipzig)

When: November 15, 2024, 10:00–17:00

The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in the nuclear – as both material reality and cultural phenomenon. From resurfaced fears of nuclear warfare and disasters to debates about the use of nuclear technology as a sustainable alternative to carbon-intense and fossil-based forms of energy. At the same time, popular text such as Oppenheimer (2023) or the miniseries Chernobyl (2019) indicate a renewed fascination with both nuclear capabilities and post-apocalyptic scenarios. Have we entered a new nuclear age, or have we never truly been post-nuclear?

This online workshops brings together early career and established international scholars working on the representations of the material traces and cultural legacies of the nuclear in transnational North American literature and culture, focusing on the 1980s and beyond. We will look at the nuclear as a site that negotiates and brings into conversation environmental and other societal, political, and individual crises in cultural production. While previous scholarship on the nuclear has often stressed its essential unrepresentability, this workshop is specifically interested in the modes, forms, and media of the nuclear.

Please see the program for more info.

To attend the online workshop, please register here.