Dr Katarina Stenke, University of Greenwich
Monday, September 12th, 5-7 pm, E002 room
Zoom link: https://u-picardie-fr.zoom.us/j/85868994862?pwd=TS9MYUtxeEs4bGFOdmE2b0d1Y1dQUT09
Information overload is everywhere; who nowadays can say they have never felt overwhelmed by facts, images, opinions, information of all kinds, coming at us relentlessly on our various devices, as digital media continue to expand? In the same period, however, another kind of “overwhelm” has also beset us: climate anxiety, an increased awareness of and concern for the damage to the world’s ecological systems.
These two phenomena – information overload and climate anxiety – are not unconnected; the rise in digital information technology contributes significantly to global warming and environmental damage, while the increased accessibility of information means that more of us than ever are aware of the severe threats to our climate and environment. In both cases, furthermore, we find the idea of excessive stimulus – information that is either quantitively or qualitatively excessive – which by its sheer scale or force induces a sense of being unable to respond or move on: there is too much to cope with.
This nexus of excess is not just a phenomenon of our current era, however. What we can learn from the feeling of “overwhelm” that people in the past have felt in response both to large environmental phenomena and to human-generated cognitive excess? Late-seventeenth-century written accounts of mountain tourism and travel allow us to elucidate the practices, experiences and contexts of historical “mountain feelings” in order to offer fresh perspectives on our current feelings about nature, knowledge and excess.
Biography:
Dr Katarina Stenke is a Senior Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Literature at the University of Greenwich. Her research lies in the field of eighteenth-century British literature and seeks to elucidate intersections between abstract, cultural concepts and eighteenth-century manuscript and print. She has published peer-reviewed articles and chapters in the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Studies in the Literary Imagination and elsewhere on topics such as: politics of mourning in women’s writing; being subversive in eighteenth-century religious verse; connections between orientalism and parochialism; and representations of mazes and statues in eighteenth-century poetry. She is currently preparing a monograph on eighteenth-century long poems; co-editing a collection of essays on ‘impolite periodicals’; and researching representations of mass mortality in eighteenth-century verse by women.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Amélie Junqua (July 9, 2022). From information overload to climate anxiety: mountain feelings and figures of excess in early eco-poetics. Seeds of Literature. Retrieved May 23, 2025 from https://seeds.hypotheses.org/204