Unsettling Dystopias in the Anthropocene

Symposium date: 23-24 May 2026

23-24 May 2026

Centennial Memorial Hall, Meeting Room No. 2, 3-25-40 Sakurajosui, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 156-8550, Japan

An international symposium on Unsettling Dystopias in the Anthropocene will be held on 23–24 May 2026 at Nihon University (College of Humanities and Sciences, Tokyo).
Over the past two decades, the concept of the Anthropocene has sparked interdisciplinary debates at the intersection of the natural sciences and the humanities. While the relatively stable climate of the Holocene enabled the development of human civilization, current anthropogenic interventions into the Earth system are increasingly understood as exceeding planetary boundaries. These developments have given rise to a wide range of dystopian narratives in literature, film, and cultural discourse.
The symposium brings together scholars from literary and cultural studies as well as related disciplines within Anthropocene studies to explore the aesthetic, philosophical, and historical dimensions of dystopian imaginaries. Particular attention will be paid to the role of literature and the humanities in mediating scientific knowledge and shaping ecological awareness.

PROGRAM
Saturday, 23 May 2026

09:15–09:45: Registration
09:45–10:00: Welcome and Opening Remarks
Lay Sion NG (Sophia University) / Thomas Schwarz (Nihon University)

10:00–11:00
Keynote Lecture
Gabriele Dürbeck (University of Vechta): Seeds of Hope in Dystopian Anthropocene Literature

11:30–13:00
Panel 1: The Anthropocene in World Literature
Myles Chilton (Nihon University)
“Tawada’s The Emissary and Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy: The Anthropocene after Cold War Big Science”
Thomas Schwarz (Nihon University)
“Pacific Islands as Laboratories of the Anthropocene: Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands”
Kahina Aimeur (Nihon University)
“Dystopian Shocks and Global Transformation in The Ministry for the Future (2020)”

14:00–15:30
Panel 2: German Apocalyptic Angst
Jyoti Sabharwal (University of Delhi)
“Apocalypse, Search for the Past and a Lost River: Reading the Anthropocene in Dorothea Elmiger’s Einladung an die Waghalsigen”
Rasmus Terörde (Chulalongkorn University)
“Between Decoration and Tipping Point: Christian Kracht’s Air as a Pop-Cultural Anthropocene Dystopia”
Raluca Rădulescu (University of Bucharest)
“Back to Nature: Transbiological Poetics in Contemporary German Literature”

16:00–17:30
Panel 3: The Anthropocene Avant la Lettre
Krisdi Chairatana (Kasetsart University)
“Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s The Jew’s Beech-Tree, or An Attempt at Anthropocene Narratives Avant la Lettre”
Lay Sion NG (Sophia University)
“Giving Voice to Nonhuman Matter: Re-reading Hemingway through Material Ecocriticism in the Anthropocene”
Michael D. Heitkemper-Yates (Rikkyo University)
“Entropy, Ecology, and the Anthropocene: Environmental Destruction in Thomas Pynchon’s American Pastiche”

Sunday, 24 May 2026

10:00–11:00
Keynote Lecture
Duantem Krisdathanont (Chulalongkorn University)
“Garuda, Godzilla and the Anthropocene Imagination in Asian Myth”

11:30–13:00
Panel 4: Negotiating Dystopias in the Anthropocene
Tomoko Kanda (Waseda University)
“Volcanoes and the Anthropocene Imagination: Journalism and Fiction in The Last Days of Pompeii”
Laurence Williams (Sophia University)
“Witnessing the ‘Anthropozoic Era’ in the Far East: Japan as Industrial Dystopia in British Travel Accounts, 1890–1935”
Vasilije Ivanovic (Nihon University)
“Identifying Topos, Interrogating Welt: Finding Place in the Anthropocene”

14:00–15:30
Panel 5: Anthropocene Reflections: Philosophy, Ecology, and Global Citizenship
Michael Bourguignon (Kasetsart University)
“Enlightenment into the Anthropocene: The ‘Other Thinking’ in Martin Heidegger and Ernst Jünger”
Bradley Barker (Rikkyo University)
“Homo sapiens’ Questionable Interactions with the Natural World”
Richard Evanoff (Aoyama Gakuin University)
“A Transactional Model for Achieving Ecological Sustainability, Social Justice, and Human Well-Being”

16:00–17:30
Roundtable Discussion
Collaboration or Rupture? Science and the Humanities Facing the Anthropocene
with Gabriele Dürbeck, Duantem Krisdathanont, Ken Judai, Toru Togawa, Richard Evanoff

Frais d'inscription

Interested participants are kindly requested to register in advance. A Zoom link can be provided upon request.

Contact for futher information

[email protected]