Crises and catastrophes – and the ongoing pandemic is just one example – prompt us to reconsider the relationship between humans and nature. While catastrophic events entail danger and destruction, they also provide opportunities for change. Against this background, our workshop investigates the action potential in moments of crisis. Scholars from a variety of different disciplines such as history, law, literary studies or the environmental humanities, will investigate different strategies (e.g. journalistic, propagandistic) and narratives (e.g. artistic or statistical) employed to put transformative visions in spite of and after a crisis into practice—both in the past and the present. 

This workshop is co-organized by the Heidelberg project “Epochal Life Worlds: Man, nature and technology in narratives of crisis and change” and the Rachel Carson Center Munich.