NEWS During October Professor Masami Yuki will be visiting researcher at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Umeå University. She is a Professor in English, active within the area of Environmental Humanities, at Kanazawa University, Japan. Yuki will present her research at a seminar titled "Meals in Catastrophe: Emerging Tropes in Foodscapes of the Nuclear Age" on October 14th.
Masami Yuki is a Professor in English at Kanazawa University, Japan. Her research focuses on the area of environmental humanities Humanities, for instance environmental literature and ecocriticism. Professor Yuki is a guest professor at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies and the research group Umeå Studies in Science, Technology and Environment during October 2014. During her stay at Umeå University Professor Yuki will present her research at the research seminar series in History of Science and Ideas together with Umeå Studies in Science, Technology and Environment on Tuesday October 14th. The seminar title is "Meals in Catastrophe: Emerging Tropes in Foodscapes of the Nuclear Age".
October 14th, 2014
Meals in Catastrophe: Emerging Tropes in Foodscapes of the Nuclear Age
Time and place: 13.15 - 15.00, Humanisthuset (Humanities Building), room D108“Even before the nuclear accidents of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and most recently Fukushima, issues of radioactive contamination have had a continual impact on literature. For instance, modern prototypical environmental literary works such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Ishimure Michiko’s Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow (1969) refer to nuclear and radioactive problems, albeit obscurely. This paper examines not only the recent literary responses to nuclear accidents, as found in such works as Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl (2005), Kawakami Hiromi’s God Bless You, 2011 (2011), Ikezawa Natsuki’s Soto no fune (2013), as well as documentary films including Nuclear Nation (2012) directed by Funahashi Atsushi, but also classic works perhaps more indicative of the industrial age such as Ishimure’s Paradise, in order to explore changing or unchanging tendencies in literary representations of human interactions with the environment in the nuclear age. In my examination, I will particularly focus on descriptions of food and eating because food frames and is framed by individual and societal values of life.”
Arranged by: Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies together with Umeå Studies in Science, Technology and Environment.
More info about the seminar More info about Professor Masami Yuki
Finn Arne Jørgensen, associate professor of history of technology and environmentDepartment of Historical, Philosophical and Religious StudiesUmeå University
Phone +4690-786 62 46Email
Editor: Sandra Olsson