Masculinity and the Environment: Eco-Masculinities in the American Literary Imagination

Stefan Brandt, professor of North-American studies at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz (Austria) and a specialist on ecocriticism, ecofeminism and geocriticism, will offer the seminar "Masculinity and the Environment: Eco-Masculinities in the American Literary Imagination". Brandt will elaborate on the topic of eco-masculinity and on the way Donna Harraway has influenced ecocriticism. Taking Hubert Zapf’s ideas as a cue, Brandt will examine the sensorial function of literary texts as “cultural ecology”. Stefan Brandt has co-edited Transcultural Spaces: Challenges of Urbanity, Ecology, and the Environment in the New Millennium (2010), and is the author of The Culture of Corporeality: Aesthetic Experience and the Embodiment of America (1945 - 1960) (2007). The seminar will be given in English and is part of the activities organized by the research project "Homes de ficció: cap a una història de la masculinitat a través de la literatura i el cinema dels Estats Units, segles XX i XXI" (FFI2011-23589).