Prof. Pieter Vermeulen on the literary career of the anthropocene at the Faculty of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
The Faculty of Languages, Literatures and Cultures invites to an open lecture by Belgian scholar Professor Pieter Vermeulen (KU Leuven), entitled The Anthropocene: A Literary Career. The lecture will take place on 20 October 2025 at 12:00 at the T. Taube Chair of Jewish Studies, ul. św. Jadwigi 3/4, Wrocław, in the J. Woronczak Hall.
The event is organised as part of the Excellence Initiative – Research University (IDUB) programme and co-organised by the Department of English Literature and Comparative Studies of the Institute of English Studies
Bio
Pieter Vermeulen is Associate Professor of American and Comparative Literature at KU Leuven. He has authored over 90 scholarly publications, including three monographs: Geoffrey Hartman: Romanticism after the Holocaust (Continuum, 2012), Contemporary Literature and the End of the Novel: Creature, Affect, Form (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and Literature and the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2020).
About the lecture
In the past two decades, the notion of the Anthropocene has assumed a prominent place in the humanities and social sciences. But how exactly did the term establish itself on research and teaching agendas? By looking at key developments in recent literary studies, this lecture develops a more fine-grained understanding of the concept’s multiple roles in the discipline. The lecture shows that the concept’s “literary career” not only contains different ways it has impacted literary studies, but also testifies to the way the concept itself has been shaped by its mobilizations in literature and literary studies.
Date of publication: 6.10.2025
Added by: M.K.
