Anthropocene Affordances: Scale, Narrative Form, and the Human in US-American Literature (Literary Ecologies)

The current historical moment, often referred to as the Anthropocene, is defined by profound human influence on the planetary system. Lena Pfeifer examines how contemporary US-American literature negotiates the political, ethical, and epistemological challenges posed by the Anthropocene. Connecting new formalist approaches with theories of scale, she develops the concept of »Anthropocene affordances« as a new methodological framework for analyzing narrative responses to the recent ecological crisis that reconfigure conventional forms and narrative strategies to critically discuss the role of the human as a geological force.

Lena Pfeifer received her doctorate in American Studies/Environmental Humanities at the University of Würzburg, where she has also been working as a research assistant since 2021. Her research focuses on environmental writing of the 20th and 21st centuries, discourses of the Anthropocene, climate fiction, new formalism, and nuclear cultures.