BAA Conference 2023

Environmental Citizenship: Politics, Practices, Representations

BAA Annual Conference 2023: Thursday, July 06 - Saturday, July 08, 2023

The notion of Environmental Citizenship resonates strongly across the disciplines as well as in political, educational, and activist practice. The urgency of current debates about climate change, energy use, loss of biodiversity, or extraction policies have renewed both the interest in but also the critical reflection of the concept and its analytical, cultural, and political function in American Studies.

This conference will explore the affordances of ‘environmental citizenship’ for thinking about human and more-than-human relationality and responsibility from a range of disciplinary perspectives, thus putting to test its viability and limits as a theoretical concept, a methodological tool, and a term to conceptualize cultural and political practices. Can the notion of environmental citizenship be an adequate response to global phenomena like climate change? Does the concept pose the risk of favoring greenwashing by emphasizing individual responsibility instead of systemic action or, on the contrary, can it help anchor environmental issues as elemental to democratic society? What is the potential role of fiction in reconceptualizing human and more-than-human relationalities? How does a historical perspective help us evaluate the possibilities and limits of environmental citizenship and explore alternative concepts of responsibilities and agency?

Photo: ©kasto / fotolia.com

Thursday, July 6, 2023

2 p.m. Welcome and Introduction

• Heike Paul (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, BAA) and
• Katja Sarkowsky (U Augsburg)

2.30 p.m. Panel 1
Historical Dimensions of Environmental Relationality in a More-Than-Human-World
Chair: Catrin Gersdorf (U Würzburg)

• Simone M. Müller (U Augsburg):
  Environmental Citizenship and its Territorial Limits: On US Hazardous Waste and the Struggle for Defining Environmental Protection
• Monique Allewaert (U Wisconsin-Madison):
  Four Suns: Solar Imaginaries, Climate Colonialism, and Planetary Citizenship

4 p.m. Coffee Break


4.30 p.m. BAA Award Ceremony                                 


5.30 p.m.  Keynote 1
Chair: Katja Sarkowsky (U Augsburg)

• Rebecca Tsosie (U Arizona) virtual talk:
  Rethinking Reconciliation: Land-Based Citizenship and Indigenous Futures
  Watch on YouTube

7 p.m. Reception


 

Friday, July 7, 2023

9 a.m. Panel 2
Literary Representations of Environmental In/Justice
Chair: Julia Faisst (U Regensburg)

• Sonya Posmentier (NYU):
  What Use are Flowers? Lorraine Hansberry's Eco-Apocalyptic Imagination
• Linda Hess (U Augsburg): 
  Satirizing the Eco-Citizen: The Question of Individual Responsibility in E.A. Copenhaver's My Days of Dark Green Euphoria

10.30 a.m. Coffee Break


11 a.m. Emerging Scholars' Forum
Chair: Ina Batzke (U Augsburg)

• Andrew Wildermuth (FAU Erlangen)
  Forging, Foraging, Forgoing: Thoreau as Settler Disaster
• Axelle Germanaz and Sarah Marak (FAU Erlangen)
  Bad Environmental Citizens: Tracing the Limits of (State-Sanctioned) Environmental Citizenship

12.15 p.m. Lunch Break


1.30 p.m. Panel 3
Practices of Environmental Citizenship
Chair: Kirsten Twelbeck (U Augsburg)

• Michael Kotutwa Johnson (U Arizona):
  Redefining Environmental Citizenship: A Hopi Indian's Perspective
• Marit Rosol (U Würzburg):
  Navigating Tensions between Environmental and Social Justice Concerns: The Case of German and Canadian Community Food Initiatives

3.30 p.m. Coffee Break


4.00 p.m. Keynote 2
Chair: Sylvia Mayer (U Bayreuth)

• Jouni Häkli (U Tampere):
  Environmental Citizenship: Between (Unwarranted) Hope and (Unproductive) Despair
  Watch on YouTube

5.45 p.m. BAA Member's Meeting


 

Saturday, July 8, 2023

9.30 a.m. Keynote 3
Chair: Linda Hess (U Augsburg)

• Joshua Barnett (Penn State U):
  Casting One's Lot: Environmental Citizenship and the Trouble with Care
  Watch on YouTube

11.00 a.m. Coffee Break


11.30 a.m. Roundtable Discussion
Environmental Citizenship as 'Doing Without'?
Chair: Heike Paul (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg)

• Michael Kotutwa Johnson (U Arizona)
• Joshua Barnett (Penn State U)
• Isabel Kalous (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg)

1 p.m.  Wrap-Up and Conference Closing