The plant-human relationships undergirding our entire human culture are changing in the Anthropocene: from industrial agriculture fueled by petroleum and radioactive plants to invasive species like Kudzu conquering entire forests, plants are responding to human actions. Some die, go extinct, and others change; in this talk on the dark green and the environmental humanities, Sullivan considers literary and scientific discussions of plants run amok in German and Anglophone literature throughout the Anthropocene. Indeed, the natural forces of living things upon which we depend for food, the water cycle, and oxygen are not passive. The future may be green in unexpected ways.

Heather I. Sullivan is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Trinity University, Texas. She is co-editor of German Ecocriticism in the Anthropocene and of The Early History of Embodied Cognition. She has been a contributing editor to publications such as New German Critique, Colloquia Germanica, and ISLE, and is author of The Intercontextuality of Self and Nature in Ludwig Tieck’s Early Works.

Reception to follow.

Organized by the Anthropocene crossdisciplinary research cluster of the Simpson Center for the Humanities. Sullivan will also lead a brown-bag seminar on Friday, April 6, at 12 pm in Communications 202. To participate, contact organizers Jason Groves (jagroves@uw.edu) or Jesse Oak Taylor (jot8@uw.edu).