In the wake of the spatial turn and the rise of ecocriticism in the late twentieth century, the question of what literary texts and other art forms have to say about the spaces and environments of the planet (and beyond) has moved from the periphery to the centre of literary and cultural studies.
Research focus and goals
Many of the cutting-edge developments within recent literary and cultural theory such as geocriticism, dark ecology, geopoetics, mobility studies, object-oriented ontology, post-phenomenology, and the debates around the Anthropocene revolve around spatial and environmental concerns.
To date, however, spatial and environmental perspectives on literature and culture are rarely combined. The Research Group on Spatial Studies and Environmental Humanities unites a number of researchers who aim to push the boundaries of spatial and environmental theories.
They examine the ways in which cultural texts and narratives are entangled with the emerging environmental and spatial concerns of contemporary society. They engage with the potential of literature and other forms of cultural production to explore spatialities and ecologies that challenge human understanding and decentre humanity; conversely, they offer perspectives on human activity as a driving force of planetary-scale environmental change.
Impact
As a science of texts, literary and cultural studies are well equipped to analyse the changing meanings and imaginaries attached to space and the environment. Working across disciplines as well as national and cultural boundaries, the group promotes the importance of literary and cultural studies as a necessary complement and counterpoint natural and social science approaches to global spaces and ecologies. They make an important contribution to the analysis of pressing environmental and geospatial concerns at a time when climate change, global migration and geopolitical conflicts fill the headlines.
The focal points include environmental poetics, watery imagineries, urban/gendered spaces, non-/human, and inanimate actors or forces, interaction; tangled, emerging and temporal factors.
Other members
Withold Bonner (TAU), Ana Calvete (UH), Hanne Juntunen (TAU), Eeva Kuikka (TAU), Toni Lahtinen (TAU), Pasi Metsä (TAU), Mika Perkiömäki (TAU), Laura Pihkala-Posti (TAU), Maarit Piipponen (TAU), Juha Raipola (TAU), Johannes Riquet (TAU, tutkimusryhmän johtaja), Arja Rosenholm (TAU), Markku Salmela (TAU), Essi Vatilo (TAU).
Contact persons
Johannes Riquet
Associate professor, Head of research group
johannes.riquet [at] tuni.fi
+358 50 437 7060