Prof. Sylvia Mayer (University of Bayreuth): "Science Fiction, Critical Utopia, and Narratives of Resilience: Ursula K. Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson and Transformative Environmentalism"

Friday, December 5, 2025, 12:15-1:45 p.m., U5/01.17

This talk discusses how science fiction—understood with Ursula K. Le Guin as thought-experiments in (inter-)planetary world-building that center on the present and explore “what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel”—has responded to ecological crisis by reimagining utopia through the lens of resilience. Focusing on theoretical and fictional works by Le Guin and on Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, it shows how science fiction can articulate adaptive, relational, and transformative responses to environmental disruption and planetary crisis. Building on recent discussions of climate resilience narratives and planetarity, it explores how both writers employ narrative form and ethical imagination to envision modes of coexistence that move beyond dystopian despair. 

Le Guin’s critical utopias and Robinson’s near-future climate fiction offer distinct yet interrelated perspectives on what resilience might mean in an age of multiple crises: not as a return to an imagined stability, but as an ongoing process of adaptation, cooperation, and planetary responsibility. By tracing the intersections of science fiction, critical utopia, and environmental ethics, the talk argues that literary texts can play an active role in transformative environmentalism, a cultural project that seeks to imagine sustainable futures while confronting the political, social, and moral complexities of planetary, socio-ecological change.

Sylvia Mayer is Professor of American Studies and Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bayreuth. Her major research areas are Ecocriticism, environmentally oriented literary and cultural studies, and African American Studies. Her research covers North American literature from the 18th century to the present. Over the last years, her ecocritical work has focused on the literary and cultural imagination of (planetary) environmental risk, most importantly, on the study of climate change fiction as environmental risk narratives. More recently, this focus has been complemented by an additional focus on issues of (environmental) resilience building. Her publications include monographs on Toni Morrison’s early novels and on the environmental ethical dimension of New England Regionalist Writing, 1865 –1918. She has edited and co-edited several volumes, among them Restoring the Connection to the Natural World: Essays on the African American Environmental Imagination (2003) and The Anticipation of Catastrophe. Environmental Risk in North American Literature and Culture (2014, with Alexa Weik von Mossner). Her most recent essay publications discuss climate fiction by Margaret Atwood, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Jenny Offill as environmental resilience narratives. A co-edited special issue on “Environmental Citizenship” is forthcoming with Amerikastudien/American Studies.

This talk is a part of the reading course “Resist, Adapt, Survive: Reading Resilience in Contemporary American Literature and Culture” (A?ar, WiSe 2025/26) and is open to everyone!