Ecology in Late-Soviet Literary and Material Culture

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel will investigate how late-Soviet literary and material culture engaged with the rising level of global concern for the natural environment. The papers will address the ecological relationship among humankind, nature, and culture by examining: how paper as a commodity derived from the natural resource of timber was essential to the print industry, and how its recycling and exchange were politicized (Pristed); how man’s natural and built environments might harmoniously co-exist, both in aesthetic and practical terms (Karpova); and how popular speculative fiction imagined overcoming environmental challenges by, for example, genetically redesigning humankind (McQuillen). Through their case studies drawn from the 1970s-80s, the panelists will participate in today’s pressing “global conversation” about environmental conservation by probing what the study of literary and material culture can tell us about humankind’s evolving attitudes toward its home planet.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology/Cultural Studies

Chair

• Ian Micah Helfant, Colgate U

Papers

• Reading and Recycling: Late Soviet Paper and Publishing Politics - Birgitte Beck Pristed, Aarhus U (Denmark)

• From 'Ecological Consciousness' to 'Environmental Approach': Responses to Ecological Issues in Leningrad Design, 1970-1980s - Yulia Karpova, Aarhus U (Denmark)

• The Ecohuman in Pavel Aminuel’s Late-Soviet Science Fiction - Colleen McQuillen, U of Illinois at Chicago

Discussant

• Birgit Menzel, U of Mainz (Germany)