TEFL News & Events

By offering various approaches and perspectives on topics such as climate, society, and the future, the “Klimabuchmesse 2026” in Leipzig emphasized the importance of literature in times of crisis.

Spread over four days, the fair offered a wide range of literary genres and experts, some with a special focus on environmental issues. Furthermore, the event illuminated the emotional charge (and oppression) that accompanies topics such as environment.

On Friday 20th, Katharina Bendixen, Uwe Küchler, and Berbeli Wanning discussed how reading can promote environmental awareness both in a school context and in one’s private reading habits.

Can language education actually spark environmental awareness? In his new monograph, Uwe Küchler says yes—and shows how. He draws on years of interdisciplinary research, synthesizing insights from ecocriticism, ecolinguistics, and environmental humanities for foreign language teaching. The core argument: language, literature, culture, and media communication can genuinely enrich environmental discussions.

Written for researchers, educators, and students, the book offers a framework for environmental literacy that tries to ditch doom-and-gloom narratives. Instead, it champions hope, agency, and constructive paths toward sustainability. Furthermore, this book covers aspects such as concepts, materials, and terminology essential to environmental and sustainability education, emphasizing the importance of approaching to this topic in a more positive and hopeful manner.

Over the past few years, the Wildermuth Program has sparked numerous follow-up projects and cooperative endeavors. As one of the most recent Wildermuth Reloaded activities, Uwe Küchler has contributed a chapter to the volume “Engaging with Environmental Education through the Language Arts“, that was edited by the former Wildermuth Chairs Amanda Naylor and Nicholas McGuinn of the University of York. In his chapter, Küchler argues, that (foreign) language education can play a significant role in the environmental debate, as language undoubtedly shapes our thinking and perception of the world.

Highlighting the increasing relevance of political education, this book reaches beyond state institutions by focusing on cultural materials and their contribution to the construction of cultural memories and pedagogy.

This edited volume brings together keynote lectures and selected panel contributions from the 68^th Annual Meeting of the German Association of American Studies, "Political Education and Cultural Memory," held in Tübingen, June 9-11, 2022. The conference—and this volume—recognized that education is essential to any political endeavor, while every educational practice inherently carries political implications.