Lecture Series 2022
Ending Worlds. CAPAS Lecture Series 2022
End time scenarios like the ongoing COVID-19 crisis or the flood disaster and heat waves due to anthropogenic climate change are just the most recent examples of experiences that act as apocalyptic catalysts and inspire apocalyptic thinking. It is a joint lecture series of the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) and the project “Epochal Life Worlds: Man, nature and technology in narratives of crisis and change” of the Joint Centre for Advanced Studies “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective: A Dialogue with China”. It undertakes the task of exploring imaginaries and experiences of catastrophic and (post-)apocalyptic events from an interdisciplinary perspective. The summer semester of 2022 is dedicated to imaginaries and experiences of (post-)apocalyptic and catastrophic events with a special focus on Asia.
Both centres are advanced research centres which host internationally renowned fellows. With this format, the research at the Centres is made accessible to all members of Heidelberg University. Lectures are going to be held in English.
The lectures will be held at HS 14, Neue Universität, Universitätsplatz 1, 69117 Heidelberg (the respective current pandemic regulations apply). Due to the ongoing pandemic, the lectures will be streamed digitally as well.
Tuesdays 6:15 PM – 7:45 PM
17.5. “The Meanings of Mass Mortality in a Japanese Volcanic Winter”
Fabian Drixler (Yale University & CAPAS Fellow)
24.5. NEW: “Imagining the Apocalypse: What are the Politics of Art and Visual Culture Picturing the End Times?”
NEW: Theresa Deichert (Heidelberg University, Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies)
31.5. “Forget Malthus. A Death-Defying Attempt to Rewrite Global Food History”
Frank Uekötter (University of Birmingham & CAPAS Fellow)
7.6. “Immanent Apocalypse: Reading Art as Philosophy”
Yi Chen (CAPAS Fellow)
14.6. “Playing the End of the World As We Know It: Tabletop Role-Playing Games as (Post-)Apocalyptic Story Engines”
Adrian Hermann (University of Bonn & CAPAS Fellow)
21.6. “Self-Portraits at the Edge. Devices for Studying Apocalyptic Imaginations in the Anthropocene”
Christine Hentschel (University of Hamburg & CAPAS Fellow)
28.6. “Apocalyptic and Anti-apocalyptic Cosmologies in Modern Hinduism”
Richard Weiss (Victoria University of Wellington & CAPAS Fellow)
5.7. NEW: "Terran Terror: Planetary Collapse in Global Science Fiction”
NEW: Johannes D. Kaminski (Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences / Former Fellow, Joint Center for Advanced Studies “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective”)
12.7. “From Witnessing to Remembrance – The Documentary of Wuhan Lockdown”
Meng Xia (Fellow, Joint Center for Advanced Studies “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective”)
19.7. “Thoughts on the Relationship Between Apocalypse and Idyll in the Literature of the 'Little Ice Age'”
Joana van de Löcht (Fellow, Joint Center for Advanced Studies “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective”)
26.7. “Voices Mediated: Plants and Landscapes as Apocalyptic Responses to the Ming-Qing Cataclysm"
Wang Yizhou (Fellow, Joint Center for Advanced Studies “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective”)