Imagining Earth

While concepts of Earth have a rich tradition, more recent examples show a distinct quality: Though ideas of wholeness might still be related to mythical, religious, or utopian visions of the past, "Earth" itself has become available as a whole. This raises several questions: How are the notions of one Earth or our Planet imagined and distributed? What is the role of cultural imagination and practices of signification in the imagination of "the Earth"? Which theoretical models can be used or need to be developed to describe processes of imagining Planet Earth? This collection invites a wide range of perspectives from different fields of the Humanities to explore the means of imagining Earth.

Solvejg Nitzke (Dr. phil.), born in 1985, is a scholar of literary and cultural studies. Her research interests are catastrophe, ecological story-telling and Science Fiction. She published among other topics on the Tunguska event and Christoph Ransmayrs poetics of time. Nicolas Pethes is a professor of German studies at Universität zu Köln.