Dear all,
We trust you’ve had a rewarding and relaxing holiday/end-of-the-year break and that you are entering 2022 with new energies!
To make this start of the year very special, we have a truly exquisite treat for you, namely, The Posthumanities Hub & The Eco- and Bioart Lab webinar on ‘MORE-THAN-HUMAN LITERACY & FEMINIST POSTHUMANITIES’ with several wonderful speakers!
The event takes place on 13th January (Thu) at 13:15 – 16:00 CET.
REGISTRATION:
In order to take part in the event, please register by sending an email to the.posthumanities.hub@gmail.com by 12th January 2022 at noon (CET) the latest.
The Zoom links will be sent to you on 12th January in the evening.
MORE-THAN-HUMAN LITERACY & FEMINIST POSTHUMANITIES
This webinar presents the practices of feminist posthumanities as developed in the registers of human-animal studies and more-than-human literacy by our sister group in Finland. How can reading and writing participate in the formation of ethical interspecies relations, motivated by an ethics of care and responsibility, echoing recent requests for a relational ethics in multispecies societies and more-than-human worlds?
The talks presented are:
Sanna Karkulehto (presenter) and Nora Schuurman:
Learning to Read Equine Agency: Sense and Sensitivity at the Intersection of Scientific, Tacit and Situated Knowledges
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen: Caring with a Carnivore – On the Vegan Poetics of Cat-Writing
Kaisa Kortekallio: More-than-Human Reading and Vegetal Agency
Nóra Ugron:
Meditating with Marine Mammals – Against the Rising Sea Levels of Climate Crisis and Systemic Violence in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Creative Nonfiction
About the presenters:
Sanna Karkulehto is Professor of Literature at the University of Jyväskylä and the School of Resource Wisdom (JYU.Wisdom), Finland, and Adjunct Professor in Gender Studies (University of Lapland, FI) and Cultural Studies (University of Oulu, FI). She has published recently on, e.g., planetary wellbeing and representations and politics of gender, power, and violence, aiming at enhancing ethical encounters with others and preventing violence, abuse and exploitation of others. Her most previous publications include co-edited anthologies Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture (2020, Routledge, ed. with AK Koistinen & E Varis) that was shortlisted for the ESCL Collaborative Research Award, and Violence, Gender and Affect. Interpersonal, Institutional and Ideological Practices (2021, Palgrave Macmillan).
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen is Postdoctoral Researcher in Contemporary Culture Studies and the School of Resource Wisdom (University of Jyväskylä, FI), Adjunct Professor in Media Culture (University of Turku, FI), and a poet and teacher of creative writing. Her research interests include affect, violent fiction, popular culture, feminist posthumanism, ecocriticism, monster studies, and creative research methods. Koistinen is part of the international Monster Network and The Ecocritical Network for Scandinavian Studies (ENSCAN). In 2022, she will be working on her postdoctoral project “Reading the Anthropocene – Ecological Literacy as Creative Practice” exploring the role of creative writing in the creation of ecologically sustainable futures.
Kaisa Kortekallio is a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Jyväskylä and the School of Resource Wisdom (JYU.Wisdom). Her work bridges cognitive narratology and posthumanist approaches to literature and philosophy, with a focus on ecological speculations and more-than-human reading. She has published on New Weird, climate fiction, readerly experientiality, seasonal feelings, and close reading. Kortekallio is a member of the research consortium Instrumental Narratives: The Limits of Storytelling and New Story-Critical Narrative Theory (Academy of Finland 2018–2022).
Nora Schuurman is Academy Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor of Human–Animal Studies at the University of Turku, Finland, as well as Adjunct Professor of Animal Geography at the University of Eastern Finland. She specialises in human-animal studies and animal geographies. Her main area of expertise is human-animal relationality, and her research focuses on, for example, interspecies care, animal agency and death, especially in contexts of equestrianism and pet cultures, as well as eco-nationalist discourses concerning animals. She has published widely on these topics, including a co-edited anthology Affect, Space and Animals with Jopi Nyman (2016, Routledge).
Nóra Ugron is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Turku, Finland, and a network coordinator of ELMO – Eastern European Left Media Outlet, queer-feminist poet and activist for housing justice in the Social Housing NOW! movement in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In her activist and artistic work she aims for building resilient communities and networks of anti-capitalist resistance, based on mutual care and comradeship in the Eastern European region. In her PhD thesis she researches SF practices and kin literacy in artistic and literary works, as well as in liberating activist knowledge production. The thesis looks at works from different geopolitical locations that encompass transformative visions regarding our relatings to each other and to the world. Her research interests are feminist posthumanism, SF, climate fiction, queer theory and decolonial thinking.
Image used in the poster: courtesy of Nóra Ugron