Books by Christopher Schliephake
Basileus Eirenophylax: Friedenskultur(en) und monarchische Repräsentation in der Antike, 2023
In current research, military victories are regarded as an important means of legitimizing ancien... more In current research, military victories are regarded as an important means of legitimizing ancient monarchies. Although a necessarily bellicose orientation of monarchical action is often assumed a priori, the aspect of victoriousness in the context of monarchical self-representation must be weighted accordingly. This volume explores the central question of whether war is primarily conceptualized as a means of establishing peace or as a way of appropriating material resources. For this purpose, leading international experts on ancient monarchy do not look at political practice itself, but at its representation and reflection in various media and texts. The monarchical traditions of the Near East, Hellenistic kingship, Roman emperorship, and the transformation of Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages will be examined. In addition to a descriptive and analytical part, the contributions contain a collection of central sources, which will provide an indispensable basis for the future study of the topic of peace in antiquity.
Anticipatory Environmental (Hi)Stories from Antiquity to the Anthropocene.(Environment and Society), Lexington Books 2023. , 2023
Anticipatory Environmental (Hi)Stories from Antiquity to the Anthropocene studies the interplay o... more Anticipatory Environmental (Hi)Stories from Antiquity to the Anthropocene studies the interplay of environmental perception and the way societies throughout history have imagined the environments in which coming generations would live. What sorts of knowledge were and are involved in outlining future environments? What kinds of texts and narrative strategies were and are developed and modified over time? How did and do scenarios and narratives of the past shape (hi)stories of the future? This book answers these questions from a diachronic as well as a cross-cultural perspective. By looking at a diverse range of historical evidence that transcends stereotypical utopian and dystopian visions, the contributors illustrate the multifaceted character of environmental anticipation across the ages.
The Environmental Humanities and the Ancient World: Questions and Perspectives (Elements in Environmental Humanities), 2020
Open access btw. July 6-20, 2020, on https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/environmental-humani... more Open access btw. July 6-20, 2020, on https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/environmental-humanities-and-the-ancient-world/388E97BEEF1E11E6EF2714A0724D193C
Abstract: What can a study of antiquity contribute to the interdisciplinary paradigm of the environmental humanities? And how does this recent paradigm influence the way we perceive human-'nature' interactions in pre-modernity? By asking these and a number of related questions, this Element aims to show why the ancient tradition still matters in the Anthropocene. Offering new perspectives to think about what directions the ecological turn could take in classical studies, it revisits old material, including ancient Greek religion and mythology, with central concepts of contemporary environmental theory. It also critically engages with forms of classical reception in current debates, arguing that ancient ecological knowledge is a powerful resource for creating alternative world views.
Nachhaltigkeit in der Antike: Diskurse, Praktiken, Perspektiven/Sustainability in Antiquity: Discourses, Practices, Perspectives
Nachhaltigkeit ist ein Schlagwort, das in den letzten Jahren verstärkt in aller Munde ist. Aber k... more Nachhaltigkeit ist ein Schlagwort, das in den letzten Jahren verstärkt in aller Munde ist. Aber kannten eigentlich antike Gesellschaften Formen von ‚Nachhaltigkeit‘? Wie gingen Griechen und Römer mit erschöpfbaren Ressourcen wie Wasser und Holz um? Wurde Abfall wiederverwendet, und gab es überhaupt ein Bewusstsein für menschengemachte Umweltzerstörung? Die Autorin- nen und Autoren zeigen, dass die Diskussionen um ‚Nachhaltigkeit‘ eine Ideengeschichte haben, die bis in die Vormoderne zurückreicht, und dass eine Anwendung moderner Begrifflichkeiten auf antike Gesellschaften Probleme, v.a. aber Perspektiven mit sich bringt, die dieser Band grundlegend aufarbeitet. Die antiken Gesellschaften mö- gen keinen Begriff für ‚Nachhaltigkeit‘ gekannt haben – in den Praktiken ihres Umweltverhaltens bieten sie dennoch reichlich Anschauungsmaterial, das sowohl Parallelen, aber auch wichtige Unterschiede zur Gegenwart erkennen lässt. Und
das unser Verständnis der antiken Umweltge- schichte auf eine neue Grundlage stellt.
On Alexander's Tracks: Exploring Geographies, Memories, and Cultural Identities along the North-West Frontier of British India in the Nineteenth Century (Oriens et Occidens 30), 2019
How did British officers, geographers, and adventurers use
the motif of ‘travelling’ in Alexander... more How did British officers, geographers, and adventurers use
the motif of ‘travelling’ in Alexander’s ‘footsteps’ during their respective missions in Central Asia? Christopher Schliephake shows how the reception of Alexander the Great became an in- tegral part of imperial self-representation and colonial identity in the nineteenth century. As Schliephake argues, the experien- tial framework of the exploration and conquest of regions like the Punjab or Afghanistan turned the abstract notion of follow- ing in Alexander’s ‘tracks’ into a highly relevant category for negotiating the relationship between the present and the past, Europe and Asia. However, the further the British explorers ad- vanced, they realized that Alexander had already been waiting for them – he came in the guise of Sikander or Iskander and some local indigenous tribes even claimed direct descent from him. The way the writings of the travelers reacted to the cultural confrontation between a ‘Western’ and an ‘Eastern’ Alexander will be one of the main themes of this book.
" Too many writers assume that ecocriticism and environmental engagement began with the poems of ... more " Too many writers assume that ecocriticism and environmental engagement began with the poems of William Wordsworth or the writings of Henry David Thoreau. This collection of essays well demonstrates that for as long as humans have been creating texts, they have been meditating critically upon their place within a natural world that far exceeds them in scale and duration. Of as much interest to those working in the environmental humanities as to classicists, Ecocriticism, Ecology, and the Cultures of Antiquity demonstrates that the Greek and Latin texts of antiquity have much of importance to add to a critical conversation today. " —Jeffrey J. Cohen, George Washington University
"This is the first volume that systematically addresses the contributions of cultures of antiquity to ecological thought. Written by international experts in the field, the essays cover a broad spectrum of areas ranging from environmental histories to close textual readings, from literary poetics to natural philosophy, from ecophobic to ecoerotic discourses, from green genres to the reception of classical sources in modern ecological contexts. This substantive volume impressively demonstrates the continued significance of cultures of antiquity as a deep-time dimension of contemporary ecological thought, testifying to the sustainability of texts across the boundaries of cultures and historical periods. " —Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg
By focusing on ancient cultures and their reception, the current volume addresses a blind spot in our environmental debates, paving the way for an integration of antiquity into our current ecocritical theory and practice. The first ecocritical book to do so, it aims at a re-evaluation of antiquity in the light of present-day environmental concerns and reframes our contemporary outlook on the more-than-human world in the light of cultures far removed from our own. This decidedly historical perspective fills in a blank in ecocritical discourse by questioning, problematizing, and informing our contemporary debates with a completely different take on " nature " and humanity's place in the world. Bringing recognized experts in the field together with classicists and new voices in ecocriticism, this volume establishes a productive dialogue between contemporary ecocritical theories and the classical tradition.
Forthcoming December 2014. The term “urban ecology” has become a buzzword in various disciplines... more Forthcoming December 2014. The term “urban ecology” has become a buzzword in various disciplines, including the social and natural sciences as well as urban planning and architecture. The environmental humanities, however, have been slow to adapt to current theoretical debates, often excluding human-built environments from their respective frameworks. The aim of this book is therefore to close this gap both in theory as well as in practice, bringing together “urban ecology” with ecocritical approaches by conceptualizing the city as an integral part of the environment and as a space in which ecological problems become manifest concretely. Combining the approaches of urban ecology, material ecocriticism and cultural ecology, the study argues that culture has to be seen as an active component and integral factor within urban ecologies. It makes use of a metaphorical use of the term, perceiving cities as spatial phenomena that do not only have manifold and complex material interrelations with their respective (natural) environments, but that are intrinsically connected to the ideas, imaginations, and interpretations that make up the cultural symbolic and discursive side of our urban lives and that are stored and constantly renegotiated in their cultural and artistic representations. The city is, within this framework, both seen as an ecosystemically organized space as well as a cultural artifact. Thus, the urban ecology outlined in this study takes its main impetus from an analysis of examples taken from contemporary culture - from non-fictional urban writing to tv series/documentaries and films - that deal with urban life and the complex interrelations between urban communities and their (natural and built) environments.
Blurbs:
“In thinking together urban environments, their cultural representations, and a great number of current theoretical notions, from ecocriticism to the new materialism, Schliephake's book develops an approach of 'cultural urban ecology’ which broadens the perspective of the fields of cultural ecology and cultural urban studies alike, and makes this book a must-read for everyone interested in ecocritical approaches to the city and the environmental humanities in general.”—Roman Bartosch, University of Cologne
“This highly innovative study explores new terrain in the fields of Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities by combining the approaches of Material Ecocriticism, Cultural Ecology, and Urban Ecology into a complex framework of interdisciplinary inquiry. The book renders important new insights into the emerging field of a cultural urban ecology as reflected in a broad spectrum of textual and cultural media between realist and imaginative modes.”—Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg
“This timely study combines insights from ecology, geography, and cultural studies to develop an environmental perspective on the city. Instead of pining for elusive country idylls, it asks how we can understand and improve the places in which most of us actually live. Urban Ecologies: City Space, Material Agency, and Environmental Politics in Contemporary Culture is required reading for environmentalists across the disciplines, and it will be of great interest to anyone thinking about cities today—including fans of Treme and The Wire.”—Timo Müller, University of Augsburg
“Urban Ecologies is ecocritical cultural studies at its finest with a welcome focus on urban ecology. Schliephake masterfully develops his argument through studies of nonfiction reportage, The Wire and Treme television series, documentary films, and cinema, with an especially clear exposition of how so-called ‘natural’ events are rarely natural, but rather technological disasters.”—Patrick Murphy, author of Transversal Ecocritical Praxis
Papers (selection) by Christopher Schliephake
Liminalisierung: Konfigurationen des Übergangs in antiken Kulturen (PAW 76), eds. C. Bachmann, J.Leithoff and K. Waldner, 2021
The essay deals with aspects of liminalisation in the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus of Daldis (ca.... more The essay deals with aspects of liminalisation in the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus of Daldis (ca. late 2nd-early 3rd cent. CE). It looks at the rites of passage included in the analysed dreams and at their interpretation. Artemidorus was concerned with alleviating potentially disturbing or subversive dream images. He was solely interested in the sociocultural meaning of dreams and paid no attention to the personal disposition of the dreamer. Every dream presented to him was interpreted along the lines of a clearly defined system inspired by observations from social life. Even dreams dealing with violence or forms of ‘social drama’ were analysed with reference to sociocultural aspects such as age, class, or gender. Artemidorus based theory and practice of his oneiromancy on a long and influential tradition which considered dreams to have substantial meaning in real life. Ancient dream divination can be seen as a form of liminalisation that discursively rendered dreams significant and that self-reflectively analysed what was socially acceptable and what was not.
TextRessourcen Agrarische, soziale und poetische Ressourcen in archaischer und hellenistischer Zeit, eds. D. Delp and X. Herren (Spudasmata 187), 2021
The following essay looks at two central terms of current theoretical debates in the humanities: ... more The following essay looks at two central terms of current theoretical debates in the humanities: ‘culture‘ and ‘nature‘. While humanism has conceptualized their relationship as a binary one since the Enlightenment, recent theories question the factual and ideological underpinnings of this presupposed opposition. Drawing on theories taken from the new interdisciplinary paradigm of the “Environmental Humanities“ (including an “ecology without nature“ and “cultural ecology“), the essay seeks to ask what ancient texts can add to the theoretical discussion and raises the question whether ancient culture was also characterized by a ‘nature‘-‘culture‘ divide. In this context, the essay understands ancient texts as resources for revisiting and re- conceptualizing long-held cultural assumptions.
Ressourcen in historischer Perspektive, 2020
This essay looks at the role of water as a natural, social, and cultural resource in Herodotus' H... more This essay looks at the role of water as a natural, social, and cultural resource in Herodotus' Histories and the way the narrative uses water as a socioecological medium to reflect on the differences between Greeks and Non-Greeks.
Gaia, 2020
This essay makes a case for long-term history and its importance to the field of environmental hu... more This essay makes a case for long-term history and its importance to the field of environmental humanities. Examining why the ancient world has only played a marginal role in this new paradigm so far, a new perspective on ancient environments is encouraged-one that does not see these environments as static containers of cultural memory, but rather as dynamic sites of human-nature interaction. With the help of one central text from the ancient world, Pausanias' Description of Greece, this essay seeks to introduce a reconceptualization of the ancient Mediterranean region-especially ancient Greece-as a landscape of porosity.
Ch. Schliephake/N. Sojc/G. Weber (eds.), Nachhalltigkeit in der Antike: Diskurse, Praktiken, Perspektiven, 2020
Do mythological stories contain elements which we may term "ecological"? And how do the story ele... more Do mythological stories contain elements which we may term "ecological"? And how do the story elements of myths negotiate the interaction between human society and the nonhuman world? Starting from these questions, the essay looks at the foundational myth of ancient Athens, namely the contest between Athena and Poseidon. The main argument is that the myth reflects on the interplay between the lifegiving elements, earth and (salt-)water, and how they relate to human social organization and processes of meaning-making. Highlighting the olive's central role for Athenian society and culture, the myth underscores the fundamental importance of a sustainable handling of the resource - an insight that found concrete expression in cult and "sacred law". Remarks on the role of religion for a theory and practice of sustainability conclude the discussion.
Kilo 102(1), 2020
Summary: My essay is about British travelers and explorers along British India’s north-west front... more Summary: My essay is about British travelers and explorers along British India’s north-west frontier from the Napoleonic epoch until the twentieth century. It focuses on the way British colonial officers, geographers, archaeologists, and solitary adventurers used the motif of traveling in Alexander the Great’s ‘foot- steps’ or ‘tracks’. The analyzed source material consists of travel writing, a vastly popular genre at the heyday of the British Empire. Although these travel writings varied throughout the ‘long nineteenth century’ due to different experiences and historical circumstances, and although each traveler brought his own character to bear on the texts, travelling in Alexander’s ‘footsteps’ or ‘tracks’ remained a central literary trope. Despite the heterogeneity of the sources, my analysis shows that the memory of Alexander the Great was a central discoursive instrument to interpret Britain’s historical ‘mission’ in this part of the world and offered a possi- bility of symbolically establishing an exchange between past and present, Briton and native. Against this background, the essay illustrates the defining modes of classical reception in travel writings, including geographical, self-representative, cultural as well as identity-forming aspects.
Ecocriticism, Ecology, and the Cultures of Antiquity, ed. Christopher Schliephake (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017): 1-15.
Although current environmental debates lay the focus on the Industrial Revolution as a sociopolit... more Although current environmental debates lay the focus on the Industrial Revolution as a sociopolitical development that has led to the current environmental crisis, many ecocritical projects have avoided historicizing their concepts or have been characterized by approaches that were either pre-historic or post-historic: while the environmental movement has harbored the dream of restoring nature to a state untouched by human hands, there is also the pessimistic vision of a post-apocalyptic world, exhausted by humanity’s consumption of natural resources. Against this background, the decline of nature has become a narrative template quite common among the public environmental discourse and environmental scientists alike. The volume revisits Antiquity as an epoch which witnessed similar environmental problems and came up with its own interpretations and solutions in dealing with them. This decidedly historical perspective is not only supposed to fill in a blank in ecocritical discourse, but also to question, problematize, and inform our contemporary debates with a completely different take on “nature” and humanity’s place in the world. Thereby, a productive dialogue between contemporary ecocritical theories and the classical tradition is established that highlights similarities as well as differences. This volume is the first book to bring ecocriticism and the classical tradition into a comprehensive dialogue.
Ecocriticism, Ecology, and the Cultures of Antiquity, ed. Christopher Schliephake (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017): 259-278.
In the chapter, I want to bring cultural ecology together with classical reception studies – two ... more In the chapter, I want to bring cultural ecology together with classical reception studies – two paradigms of cultural theory that have rarely interacted so far, but, as I want to show, fit well together, because both deal with questions of cultural (self-)renewal and the mobility of symbolic forms of meaning making (between culture and nature and between different times and spaces respectively). While cultural ecology has mainly been concerned with studying the interrelations between the non-human world and cultural formations, classical reception studies have explored how classical texts or images have constantly been re-employed, re-integrated and transformed by subsequent cultures all around the world. And although cultural ecology has dealt with how human culture has been transfused by ecological processes found in nature and classical reception studies have been interested in the way in which societies have used the ancient tradition to renew their own cultural formations and to construct their collective identity, both fields of research have more in common than one would usually suggest. Both paradigms are very much about renewal: Where cultural ecology studies the way in which evolutionary processes akin to those found in nature are necessary for the dynamic and vibrant power of cultural expression, classical reception studies explore the way in which the new or renewed is made out of the old, which is both a cultural archive and a foil upon which to re-make the world. They are also both informed by a poststructuralist approach, which studies the discoursive mediatedness of their respective subjects. This does not entail that both paradigms presuppose that everything is a social construct, embedded in a network of signs, but rather that they are sensitive to cultural processes of appropriation of the “other” (i.e. of nature/of antiquity) into its fabrics and to the discoursive practices through which these translations/transformations are mediated. I argue that it is along these lines of cultural (self-)renewal and symbolic transformation that both paradigms can complement each other and enter into a productive dialogue.
Amerikastudien/American Studies 61.1, 2016
Classical reception studies have developed into a vibrant field of research. Over the last decade... more Classical reception studies have developed into a vibrant field of research. Over the last decade, a new paradigm has evolved that studies often conflicting and heterogeneous receptions of classical literature in African American and Caribbean contexts. What is now commonly referred to as “black classicism” is, against this background, both a socio-political phenomenon and a cultural theory. In my essay, I want to focus on one author who has commented on “black classicism” in a theoretical as well as poetical way: Reginald Shepherd’s writings repeatedly draw on the classical canon, re-situating it in an African American context and re-reading its contents from the perspective of an outsider in order to undermine racial essentialisms. How- ever, they do not function exclusively as counterdiscourses, but can rather be seen as an imagina- tive framework for thinking about the cultural fabrics of classicisms and the liberating potential they entail. This essay, then, discusses the cultural-historical and theoretical implications of Shepherd’s work against a review of his variant of “black classicism” before moving on to ex- plore the transnational and transcultural imagination it inspires.
Anglia 134(1) (2016)
My essay brings cultural ecology together with classical reception studies – two paradigms of cul... more My essay brings cultural ecology together with classical reception studies – two paradigms of cultural theory that have rarely interacted so far, but, as I want to show, fit well together, because both deal with questions of cultural (self-)renewal and the mobility of symbolic forms of meaning making (between culture and nature and between different times and spaces respectively). As analytic examples, I choose three examples of the cultural reception of the myth of Orpheus, since it resonates strongly with cultural ecology and classical reception alike. In order to illustrate the cultural mobility of the myth in modern times, I want to look at African American and African Brazilian contexts in which it has figured prominently as a symbol for black artistic creation. This entails a discussion of the term 'black classicism' that has gained prominence in recent times as post-colonial and poststructuralist approaches have renegotiated the cultural presumptions upon which the classical tradition rests. As the examples show, the myth is both used as a counter discourse against hegemonic readings of the classics that situate them within a Eurocentric and white context as well as a discourse that valorizes musical and bodily performance against textual practice and that celebrates biophilic life energies.
Mitteilungen des Instituts für Europäische Kulturgeschichte 22 (2014)
The essay discusses the concept of "black classicism" in the light of postcolonial theory. Lookin... more The essay discusses the concept of "black classicism" in the light of postcolonial theory. Looking at different sub-strands and concepts of postcolonial discourse - pan-nationalism, writing back paradigm, and hybridity - the essay situates different models of the reception of the classical canon by African American and Caribbean authors within these frameworks. The second part of the essay is concerned with a re-reading of the "Cyclops" episode of the Odyssey, looking at the re-interpretations that this particular text has seen in recent times.
Der Aufsatz diskutiert das Konzept eines "black classicism" im Kontext postkolonialer Theorien. Vor dem Hintergrund einer Betrachtung unterschiedlicher Konzepte des postkolonialen Diskurses - wie etwa dem Pan-Nationalismus, dem Writing Back Paradigma oder dem Hybriditäts-Konzept - wird die Rezeption des klassischen Kanons durch afro-amerikanische oder karibische Autoren in diesen theoretischen Rahmen eingegliedert. Im zweiten Teil des Essays erfolgt eine Re-Lektüre der Kyklopen-Episode der Odyssee und eine Untersuchung der Neu-Interpretationen, die dieser Text in der jüngsten Zeit erfahren hat.
Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology, ed. Hubert Zapf (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016)
Ever since antiquity, the close relationship between memory and place has been a recurrent cultur... more Ever since antiquity, the close relationship between memory and place has been a recurrent cultural phenomenon – one only needs to think of their metaphorical combination in ancient rhetoric as loci memoriae. In contemporary theory, the role of memory has been underlined as being crucial to the way in which people and collectives situate themselves in their natural environment and construct a sense of the past. On the other hand, place is, in this context, thought of as a kind of spatial container or framework of human action and as the stage of historical experience so that, in the end, a sense of place is deeply intertwined with both individual as well as collective memory. Thus, environmental psychologists stress the importance of memories of (childhood) places for the formation of self-identity, while historians underline the external, spatial contexts of memory: Stories, songs, museums, or monuments attach meaning to abstract space and locate us in “storied places”.
While this topography of memory is an integral part of the so-called “cultural memory” of a society and is made up of a highly conventionalized pool of texts, images, and civic celebrations, which are intricately bound up with the realm of politics and the way in which “communities imagine” themselves, culturally storied places are not only the subject matter of political interest groups and historiography, but also of imaginative texts and literature. Instead of functioning as a static container of historical self-images and identities with unanimous views of the past, the “cultural memory” can therefore be conceptualized as a “cultural ecosystem” in the sense of Peter Finke, one that is open to negotiation, conflict, and, eventually, change. Before this background, it will be argued that imaginative literature serves as a cultural ecological force within “cultural memory”, re-imagining and refiguring it in textual form. Therefore, it will be explored how contemporary authors deal with historical places, how they turn them into sources of the imagination and how they re-write them in order to contest hegemonic readings of them. Moreover, it will be argued that literature can function as a site of memory itself, filling in blanks of the cultural memory.
These aspects will be examined with the help of two contemporary American novels, Philip Meyer’s The Son (2013), Louise Erdrich’s The Round House (2012), and Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Bids (2012), that both deal with the unstable nature of memory and how a sense of place can be altered by the narrative unearthing of traumatic experiences.
My essay looks at contemporary developments in urbanism that renegotiate the place of nature in o... more My essay looks at contemporary developments in urbanism that renegotiate the place of nature in our cities. Looking at the example of bottom-up and top-down models of urban agriculture, two alternative approaches to urban systems are presented which try to re-embed them in the natural-material cycles of life. Firstly, the changes that have occurred in our urban landscapes (and our cultural images of them) since the age of industrialization are discussed, to uncover the socio-historical dimension of the subject. The second part analyzes the cultural urban ecology invoked in South Korean director Hae-jun Lee's film Cast Away on the Moon (2009). As I show, the film imaginatively deals with these issues and invites a reconsideration of our urban lifestyles before the background of the question what place nature has in our cities and in how far working with the soil can lead to regeneration.
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Books by Christopher Schliephake
Abstract: What can a study of antiquity contribute to the interdisciplinary paradigm of the environmental humanities? And how does this recent paradigm influence the way we perceive human-'nature' interactions in pre-modernity? By asking these and a number of related questions, this Element aims to show why the ancient tradition still matters in the Anthropocene. Offering new perspectives to think about what directions the ecological turn could take in classical studies, it revisits old material, including ancient Greek religion and mythology, with central concepts of contemporary environmental theory. It also critically engages with forms of classical reception in current debates, arguing that ancient ecological knowledge is a powerful resource for creating alternative world views.
das unser Verständnis der antiken Umweltge- schichte auf eine neue Grundlage stellt.
the motif of ‘travelling’ in Alexander’s ‘footsteps’ during their respective missions in Central Asia? Christopher Schliephake shows how the reception of Alexander the Great became an in- tegral part of imperial self-representation and colonial identity in the nineteenth century. As Schliephake argues, the experien- tial framework of the exploration and conquest of regions like the Punjab or Afghanistan turned the abstract notion of follow- ing in Alexander’s ‘tracks’ into a highly relevant category for negotiating the relationship between the present and the past, Europe and Asia. However, the further the British explorers ad- vanced, they realized that Alexander had already been waiting for them – he came in the guise of Sikander or Iskander and some local indigenous tribes even claimed direct descent from him. The way the writings of the travelers reacted to the cultural confrontation between a ‘Western’ and an ‘Eastern’ Alexander will be one of the main themes of this book.
"This is the first volume that systematically addresses the contributions of cultures of antiquity to ecological thought. Written by international experts in the field, the essays cover a broad spectrum of areas ranging from environmental histories to close textual readings, from literary poetics to natural philosophy, from ecophobic to ecoerotic discourses, from green genres to the reception of classical sources in modern ecological contexts. This substantive volume impressively demonstrates the continued significance of cultures of antiquity as a deep-time dimension of contemporary ecological thought, testifying to the sustainability of texts across the boundaries of cultures and historical periods. " —Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg
By focusing on ancient cultures and their reception, the current volume addresses a blind spot in our environmental debates, paving the way for an integration of antiquity into our current ecocritical theory and practice. The first ecocritical book to do so, it aims at a re-evaluation of antiquity in the light of present-day environmental concerns and reframes our contemporary outlook on the more-than-human world in the light of cultures far removed from our own. This decidedly historical perspective fills in a blank in ecocritical discourse by questioning, problematizing, and informing our contemporary debates with a completely different take on " nature " and humanity's place in the world. Bringing recognized experts in the field together with classicists and new voices in ecocriticism, this volume establishes a productive dialogue between contemporary ecocritical theories and the classical tradition.
Blurbs:
“In thinking together urban environments, their cultural representations, and a great number of current theoretical notions, from ecocriticism to the new materialism, Schliephake's book develops an approach of 'cultural urban ecology’ which broadens the perspective of the fields of cultural ecology and cultural urban studies alike, and makes this book a must-read for everyone interested in ecocritical approaches to the city and the environmental humanities in general.”—Roman Bartosch, University of Cologne
“This highly innovative study explores new terrain in the fields of Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities by combining the approaches of Material Ecocriticism, Cultural Ecology, and Urban Ecology into a complex framework of interdisciplinary inquiry. The book renders important new insights into the emerging field of a cultural urban ecology as reflected in a broad spectrum of textual and cultural media between realist and imaginative modes.”—Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg
“This timely study combines insights from ecology, geography, and cultural studies to develop an environmental perspective on the city. Instead of pining for elusive country idylls, it asks how we can understand and improve the places in which most of us actually live. Urban Ecologies: City Space, Material Agency, and Environmental Politics in Contemporary Culture is required reading for environmentalists across the disciplines, and it will be of great interest to anyone thinking about cities today—including fans of Treme and The Wire.”—Timo Müller, University of Augsburg
“Urban Ecologies is ecocritical cultural studies at its finest with a welcome focus on urban ecology. Schliephake masterfully develops his argument through studies of nonfiction reportage, The Wire and Treme television series, documentary films, and cinema, with an especially clear exposition of how so-called ‘natural’ events are rarely natural, but rather technological disasters.”—Patrick Murphy, author of Transversal Ecocritical Praxis
Papers (selection) by Christopher Schliephake
Der Aufsatz diskutiert das Konzept eines "black classicism" im Kontext postkolonialer Theorien. Vor dem Hintergrund einer Betrachtung unterschiedlicher Konzepte des postkolonialen Diskurses - wie etwa dem Pan-Nationalismus, dem Writing Back Paradigma oder dem Hybriditäts-Konzept - wird die Rezeption des klassischen Kanons durch afro-amerikanische oder karibische Autoren in diesen theoretischen Rahmen eingegliedert. Im zweiten Teil des Essays erfolgt eine Re-Lektüre der Kyklopen-Episode der Odyssee und eine Untersuchung der Neu-Interpretationen, die dieser Text in der jüngsten Zeit erfahren hat.
While this topography of memory is an integral part of the so-called “cultural memory” of a society and is made up of a highly conventionalized pool of texts, images, and civic celebrations, which are intricately bound up with the realm of politics and the way in which “communities imagine” themselves, culturally storied places are not only the subject matter of political interest groups and historiography, but also of imaginative texts and literature. Instead of functioning as a static container of historical self-images and identities with unanimous views of the past, the “cultural memory” can therefore be conceptualized as a “cultural ecosystem” in the sense of Peter Finke, one that is open to negotiation, conflict, and, eventually, change. Before this background, it will be argued that imaginative literature serves as a cultural ecological force within “cultural memory”, re-imagining and refiguring it in textual form. Therefore, it will be explored how contemporary authors deal with historical places, how they turn them into sources of the imagination and how they re-write them in order to contest hegemonic readings of them. Moreover, it will be argued that literature can function as a site of memory itself, filling in blanks of the cultural memory.
These aspects will be examined with the help of two contemporary American novels, Philip Meyer’s The Son (2013), Louise Erdrich’s The Round House (2012), and Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Bids (2012), that both deal with the unstable nature of memory and how a sense of place can be altered by the narrative unearthing of traumatic experiences.
Abstract: What can a study of antiquity contribute to the interdisciplinary paradigm of the environmental humanities? And how does this recent paradigm influence the way we perceive human-'nature' interactions in pre-modernity? By asking these and a number of related questions, this Element aims to show why the ancient tradition still matters in the Anthropocene. Offering new perspectives to think about what directions the ecological turn could take in classical studies, it revisits old material, including ancient Greek religion and mythology, with central concepts of contemporary environmental theory. It also critically engages with forms of classical reception in current debates, arguing that ancient ecological knowledge is a powerful resource for creating alternative world views.
das unser Verständnis der antiken Umweltge- schichte auf eine neue Grundlage stellt.
the motif of ‘travelling’ in Alexander’s ‘footsteps’ during their respective missions in Central Asia? Christopher Schliephake shows how the reception of Alexander the Great became an in- tegral part of imperial self-representation and colonial identity in the nineteenth century. As Schliephake argues, the experien- tial framework of the exploration and conquest of regions like the Punjab or Afghanistan turned the abstract notion of follow- ing in Alexander’s ‘tracks’ into a highly relevant category for negotiating the relationship between the present and the past, Europe and Asia. However, the further the British explorers ad- vanced, they realized that Alexander had already been waiting for them – he came in the guise of Sikander or Iskander and some local indigenous tribes even claimed direct descent from him. The way the writings of the travelers reacted to the cultural confrontation between a ‘Western’ and an ‘Eastern’ Alexander will be one of the main themes of this book.
"This is the first volume that systematically addresses the contributions of cultures of antiquity to ecological thought. Written by international experts in the field, the essays cover a broad spectrum of areas ranging from environmental histories to close textual readings, from literary poetics to natural philosophy, from ecophobic to ecoerotic discourses, from green genres to the reception of classical sources in modern ecological contexts. This substantive volume impressively demonstrates the continued significance of cultures of antiquity as a deep-time dimension of contemporary ecological thought, testifying to the sustainability of texts across the boundaries of cultures and historical periods. " —Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg
By focusing on ancient cultures and their reception, the current volume addresses a blind spot in our environmental debates, paving the way for an integration of antiquity into our current ecocritical theory and practice. The first ecocritical book to do so, it aims at a re-evaluation of antiquity in the light of present-day environmental concerns and reframes our contemporary outlook on the more-than-human world in the light of cultures far removed from our own. This decidedly historical perspective fills in a blank in ecocritical discourse by questioning, problematizing, and informing our contemporary debates with a completely different take on " nature " and humanity's place in the world. Bringing recognized experts in the field together with classicists and new voices in ecocriticism, this volume establishes a productive dialogue between contemporary ecocritical theories and the classical tradition.
Blurbs:
“In thinking together urban environments, their cultural representations, and a great number of current theoretical notions, from ecocriticism to the new materialism, Schliephake's book develops an approach of 'cultural urban ecology’ which broadens the perspective of the fields of cultural ecology and cultural urban studies alike, and makes this book a must-read for everyone interested in ecocritical approaches to the city and the environmental humanities in general.”—Roman Bartosch, University of Cologne
“This highly innovative study explores new terrain in the fields of Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities by combining the approaches of Material Ecocriticism, Cultural Ecology, and Urban Ecology into a complex framework of interdisciplinary inquiry. The book renders important new insights into the emerging field of a cultural urban ecology as reflected in a broad spectrum of textual and cultural media between realist and imaginative modes.”—Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg
“This timely study combines insights from ecology, geography, and cultural studies to develop an environmental perspective on the city. Instead of pining for elusive country idylls, it asks how we can understand and improve the places in which most of us actually live. Urban Ecologies: City Space, Material Agency, and Environmental Politics in Contemporary Culture is required reading for environmentalists across the disciplines, and it will be of great interest to anyone thinking about cities today—including fans of Treme and The Wire.”—Timo Müller, University of Augsburg
“Urban Ecologies is ecocritical cultural studies at its finest with a welcome focus on urban ecology. Schliephake masterfully develops his argument through studies of nonfiction reportage, The Wire and Treme television series, documentary films, and cinema, with an especially clear exposition of how so-called ‘natural’ events are rarely natural, but rather technological disasters.”—Patrick Murphy, author of Transversal Ecocritical Praxis
Der Aufsatz diskutiert das Konzept eines "black classicism" im Kontext postkolonialer Theorien. Vor dem Hintergrund einer Betrachtung unterschiedlicher Konzepte des postkolonialen Diskurses - wie etwa dem Pan-Nationalismus, dem Writing Back Paradigma oder dem Hybriditäts-Konzept - wird die Rezeption des klassischen Kanons durch afro-amerikanische oder karibische Autoren in diesen theoretischen Rahmen eingegliedert. Im zweiten Teil des Essays erfolgt eine Re-Lektüre der Kyklopen-Episode der Odyssee und eine Untersuchung der Neu-Interpretationen, die dieser Text in der jüngsten Zeit erfahren hat.
While this topography of memory is an integral part of the so-called “cultural memory” of a society and is made up of a highly conventionalized pool of texts, images, and civic celebrations, which are intricately bound up with the realm of politics and the way in which “communities imagine” themselves, culturally storied places are not only the subject matter of political interest groups and historiography, but also of imaginative texts and literature. Instead of functioning as a static container of historical self-images and identities with unanimous views of the past, the “cultural memory” can therefore be conceptualized as a “cultural ecosystem” in the sense of Peter Finke, one that is open to negotiation, conflict, and, eventually, change. Before this background, it will be argued that imaginative literature serves as a cultural ecological force within “cultural memory”, re-imagining and refiguring it in textual form. Therefore, it will be explored how contemporary authors deal with historical places, how they turn them into sources of the imagination and how they re-write them in order to contest hegemonic readings of them. Moreover, it will be argued that literature can function as a site of memory itself, filling in blanks of the cultural memory.
These aspects will be examined with the help of two contemporary American novels, Philip Meyer’s The Son (2013), Louise Erdrich’s The Round House (2012), and Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Bids (2012), that both deal with the unstable nature of memory and how a sense of place can be altered by the narrative unearthing of traumatic experiences.