Weird Ecologies and Storytelling Practices

4 – 5 April 2019
Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

The seminar explores the ethics and politics of storytelling, especially in regards to telling stories about nature and ‘the Other’. Issues addressed are, for example, how we may think critically about shifting biotechnological landscapes, environmental change and the very notion of “nature” as specific, but also potentially changing, storytelling practices.

Contributors to the seminar are scholars and artists working with questions of embodiment, vulnerability, human–non-human relations, eco-criticism, activism, and embodied storytelling practices. We invite participants to engage directly with academic and artistic practices in order to explore ways in which to imagine livable presents/futures in the midst of cultural anxieties concerning human extinction and the end of the world.

Confirmed speakers: The Monster Network, author Johanna Sinisalo, Dr. Toni Lahtinen (University of Tampere), and author Laura Gustafsson.
Writing workshop with Professor Emerita Nina Lykke.

The seminar on Thursday is free of charge (dinner, lunches and coffees are free for registered participants and invited guests). The language of the event is English.

Organised by the Monster Network, the project ‘Environmental Risks, Dystopias and Myths in Contemporary Literature’ and Finnish Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research (http://finfar.org/). In collaboration with The Ecocritical Network for Scandinavian Studies (ENSCAN). Funded by Nordic Culture Point.