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International Francqui Professor 2024-25 Ursula Heise

Prof. dr. Ursula Heise bekleedt de Marcia H. Howard leerstoel in literatuurwetenschap aan UCLA, waar ze doceert aan het departement Engels en aan het Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Van september tot december 2024 is professor Heise gasthoogleraar aan onze faculteit.

www.francquifoundation.be

Inaugurele rede

De inaugurele rede vond plaats op woensdag 2 oktober om 16 uur in de Belvedère van de Boekentoren (Rozier 9, 9000 Gent).

Fotografie: Kitty van de Waart

Environmental Futures and the Challenges of Realist Storytelling

Environmental journalists, novelists, film-makers, and artists have traditionally preferred realist genres and styles to highlight the materiality and scientific grounding of environmental crises. Over the last twenty years, this convention has increasingly come into question. On the one hand, climate change, biodiversity loss, microplastics pollution, and other rapidly evolving ecological crises have diminished the relevance of stories and images focused primarily on individuals and families, particular places, and events that are commonly considered plausible. On the other hand, narrative themes and plots from speculative fiction have increasingly spread into environmental journalism and nonfiction. Concepts such as the “new normal,” the “New Weird,” and “hyperobject” have sought to capture this altered type of realism. This lecture will explore the controversies about what kinds of realism are appropriate and effective in environmental communication today. It will argue that the narrative strategies of speculative fiction, traditionally considered a secondary or minor genre mainly designed for entertainment, offer the most interesting foundations for thinking and talking about global environmental change: not because “science fiction is the realism of our time,” as the novelist Kim Stanley Robinson has proposed, but because speculative fiction seeks to rethink and reshape common perceptions of the real from imagined futures.

Programma

16.00 - 17.30 uur: Inaugurele lezing

  • Welkomstwoord door prof. dr. Gita Deneckere, decaan faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte
  • Overhandiging Francqui medaille door mevr. Greet T'Jonck, secretaris-generaal Francqui-Stichting
  • Inleiding door prof. dr. Stef Craps, vakgroep Letterkunde
  • Inaugurele lezing prof. dr. Ursula Heise
  • Uitreiking UGent medaille door prof. dr. Rik Van de Walle, rector Universiteit Gent

17.30 - 19.00 uur : Receptie 

Class of Excellence Seminars

Elk van de seminars begint met een inleidende lezing door prof. dr. Ursula Heise over het thema van de bijeenkomst.

Iedereen is welkom. Voor meer informatie, contacteer prof. dr. Stef Craps (stef.craps@ugent.be).

LW Onderzoeksdag 2024: Van Bron naar Begrip

Ursula Heise zal een lezing verzorgen over “Narrative and Interpretation” op de 4de LW Research Day.

  • Woensdag 27 november 2024
  • Gents Universiteitsmuseum (GUM)

Wat is de rol van interpretatie in het traject dat we afleggen van bronnenstudie naar wetenschappelijke inzichten? Die weg kan immers nooit zonder interpretatie en in veel gevallen vormt interpretatie dé brug bij uitstek van bron naar begrip, of het nu gaat om een geschiedkundige studie gebaseerd op egodocumenten, de archeologische blik op de materiële cultuur van het verleden of de antropologische kijk op menselijk gedrag. Niet zelden wordt interpretatie zelf het object van onderzoek. Zo buigen vertaalwetenschappers zich over vertaalkeuzes die het product zijn van interpretaties. Letterkundigen en kunstwetenschappers onderzoeken werken die zelf een interpretatie geven aan de wereld waarin ze ontstaan en aan de wereld die ze zelf tot stand brengen. En zo reflecteert ook de taal zelf in historische en sociologische zin een bepaald begrip van de wereld, dat taalkundigen verder onderzoeken. In tijden van digital humanities wordt de interpretatie van (big) data door AI niet alleen denkbaar maar zelfs de norm. Wat betekenen interpretatie en hermeneutiek vandaag voor onze vakgebieden? Wat geldt er als geslaagde of legitieme interpretatie en wat zijn de valkuilen van interpretatie?

Rondetafeldiscussie: Encountering Environments: Classics and Ecocriticism

  • UGent, donderdag 14 november 2024, 17u00 - 18u45 (Blandijnberg 2, Faculteitszaal; na 5 november wordt een Teamslink gedeeld).
  • Deelnemers: Ursula Heise (UCLA), Alison Sharrock (University of Manchester), Aaron Kachuck (UCLouvain) en Giulia Sissa (UCLA).
  • Organisatie: Marco Formisano (UGent) en Leila Williamson (UGent).

In recent years ecocriticism has increasingly attracted the attention of an astonishingly wide range of classicists. It seems that Classics as an academic discipline, even within its more conservative scholarly traditions, has embraced the hermeneutic possibility offered by the consideration of the environment in ancient Greek and Latin texts. And yet, as the title of this event is meant to highlight, there is something disturbing in this encounter between the philological-historical discipline par excellence, Classics, and an environmental criticism that puts at the core of its investigation the more-than-human, thus insisting on the time of the environment rather than human history. Do we classicists feel the need to retrodate the advent of the Anthropocene to Greco-Roman antiquity in order to feel entitled to approach our texts in an ecocritical way? Or do we look for a literature of prefiguration or even allegory of our current environmental crisis? In any case, it seems that the emergence of environmental critical discourses in the study of the ancient Mediterranean world cannot be viewed as just another hermeneutic tool. Rather, ecocriticism represents a totalizing way of reading that might require a radical revision of the very principles ruling the discipline.

Closing Symposium: Imagining Environmental Futures

Keynote sprekers: Ursula Heise (UCLA) en Mathias Thaler (University of Edinburgh).

  • Maandag 9 December 2024,  13u00 - 20u30
  • Zaal Nick Ervinck, Zebrastraat 32, 9000 Gent
  • Gratis, maar inschrijven is verplicht (behalve voor studenten Context and Nuance die alleen de avondsessie bijwonen)

Closing Symposium: Imagining Environmental FuturesThe impossibility of predicting with absolute certainty what the planet will look like in 2030, 2050, 2100, and beyond means that policymakers have to resort to a methodology known as “scenario planning”, which uses speculation to chart various possible courses of action within an uncertain future. This is not unlike what happens in literature and other artforms that provide us with imaginative and compelling visions of possible futures and explore the consequences of different actions and decisions.

This future orientation is generally associated with science fiction and speculative fiction, genres that often rely on exaggeration and hyperbole to expose the dangers of the present moment. However, literary realism can also engage with uncertain futurity, e.g. by describing characters’ anxieties or hopes as they struggle with personal and collective crises. Novels, short stories, and films can help us expand our thinking, develop our imagination, challenge our assumptions about the future, and create a sense of urgency around the need to act.

This symposium will ponder the contribution that literature and other artistic practices can make to “futures literacy”, an essential skill for individuals, organizations, and societies that seek to navigate a rapidly changing world and to create desirable futures for themselves and others. It will offer a platform to engage in interdisciplinary conversations about how the imagination can affect our perception of the environmental future, and how we can use artistic practices to influence policy and public opinion.

Programma

  • 13u00 – 14u15: Keynote door Mathias Thaler (University of Edinburgh), “Estrangement on a Strange Planet” – voorzitter: Marco Caracciolo
  • 14u15 – 14u45: Koffiepauze
  • 14u45 – 16u45: Paper presentaties door UGent onderzoekers – voorzitter: Ben De Bruyn (UCLouvain)
    • Marco Caracciolo, “Mixed Feelings and Readerly Dynamics in Anthropocene Fiction”
    • Elly McCausland, “Slippery Bodies: On the Importance of Fish Tales”
    • Stefano Bellin, “Can We Imagine Alternative World-Ecologies? Literature and Environmental Imagination in the Age of Presentism”
    • Maria Lucia Cruz Correia en Christel Stalpaert, “Natural Contract Lab: Fabulating Resilient Rivers and Collective Stewardship”
  • 16u45 – 17u30: Broodjesmaaltijd
  • 17u30 – 18u45: Keynote door Ursula Heise (UCLA), “Distant Pasts, Near Futures, and Speculative Narrative” – voorzitter: Stef Craps
  • 19u00 – 20u30: Panelgesprek met Ursula Heise, Mathias Thaler, en de studenten van het universiteitsbrede keuzevak Context and Nuance - voorzitter: Stef Craps
Download een PDF van het symposiumboekje, met het programma, abstracts, en bios.

Voor meer informatie, contacteer Stef Craps (stef.craps@ugent.be) of Marco Caracciolo  (marco.caracciolo@ugent.be).

Faculteitsmagazine 'Binnenstebuiten'

'Klimaatkwesties' is het centrale thema van het zesde nummer van het faculteitsmagazine Binnenstebuiten.  
Stef Craps interviewde professor Heise over haar werk en haar gasthoogleraarschap.