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Lecture: 3.02.140 S Communicating Science - Engaging (with) Nature: Film & Television Documentaries and the Environment

Semester: Winter term 2025

3.02.140 S Communicating Science - Engaging (with) Nature: Film & Television Documentaries and the Environment -  


Event date(s) | room

Description

Some of the earliest documentary films, such as In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914) and Nanook of the North (1922), explore the relationship between human beings and their natural environments. Both Head Hunters and Nanook are also (pseudo-)scientific films, (purported) ethnographic studies of "primitive" peoples. As such, they demonstrate the close interconnection between science and motion pictures--indeed, motion pictures became important tools of scientific observation and inquiry practically as soon as they were discovered.

In this seminar, we will explore ways in which documentary films frame (scientific) knowledge about nature, the environment, and humankind's varied relationships and entanglements with the natural world. In so doing, we will soon discover that films that seem to center on nature often say more about humans than the natural world they purport to represent.


Films likely to be discussed (selection):
Nanook of the North (1922)
The Living Desert (1953)
The Vanishing Prairie (1954)
Life on Earth (1979)
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009)
Life (2009)
Racing Extinction (2015)
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2017)

lecturer

Study fields

  • Anglistik

SWS
--

Lehrsprache
englisch

Hinweise zum Inhalt der Veranstaltung für Gasthörende
The past decades have seen a remarkable renaissance of anglophone women writers' rewritings of ancient mythology. Whether it is Natalie Haynes’ The Children of Jocasta (2017), Madeleine Miller’s Circe (2018), Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (2018), or Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne (2021) – the list is by no means complete – what their revisionist mythmaking shares is a concern with women’s experiences, stories, and perspectives. Traditionally, classical myths as well as later re-narrations by male authors have either cast women’s figures in formulaic female subject positions or barely deemed their stories worth mentioning. As the list shows, we are still haunted by these transmitted representations and gaps, even though we might rightfully ask what Ismene and Jocasta, Circe, Briseis, Ariadne, and other (marginalized) women figures in ancient myth, still have to tell us. What contemporary issues, concerns, and desires do their stories address that continue to make them relevant? And in what ways do these issues, concerns, and desires throw light on the figures whose stories we think we already know from classical myth, or that we do not know at all? In what ways do these revisionist storytellings converse with, even reject, male-authored re/writings of ancient myth? What outlooks do the stories of and about these ancient women offer about women and about feminism? In this course, we will explore these questions, while also studying some relevant critical perspectives and contexts. Please purchase and read the following novels (they are listed in the order in which we will discuss them; no specific edition is required): Pat Barker. The Silence of the Girls. 2018. Margaret Atwood. The Penelopiad. 2005. Madeleine Miller. Circe. 2018.

(Changed: 26 Jul 2025)  |  Kurz-URL:Shortlink: https://uole.de/en/students/lehrveranstaltungen/va-details?cHash=1888eb7c52564d33888db8dd5a7225d5&course_id=24ea7ee2c78db5e833fe733a0bdad1aa
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