Marina Pingler is a PhD candidate and assistant professor at the American Studies Department. From September 2023 until February 2024, she served as a visiting scholar at the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. During her studies at the University of Tübingen and State University of New York at Stony Brook, she majored in English and History. She completed her state examination in September 2020, followed by a Master of Arts degree in April 2021. Previously, she worked as a Grant Manager and Project Administrator of the EU COST Action "Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories (COMPACT)". Her PhD project focuses on collectively held visions of future climate change in American culture and literature – so-called "climate imaginaries" – that have emerged between 2016 and 2023 but remain marginalized in climate change discourse. In her project, she examines the co-production of alternative scenarios of future climate change at the intersection of activism and literature and asks how medial and genre-specific particularities influence these alternative imaginaries.
Research Interests
Environmental criticism
Speculative fiction
Native American cultures and literature
19th-century American literature and culture
Popular culture
Climate fiction (PhD-thesis on „Re-Imagining Climate Futures: Alternative Imaginaries in American Literature and Culture“, working title)
Seminar: Introduction Cultural Studies (WS 2022/23)
Seminar: Postmodern Fiction (SS 2022)
Seminar: Introduction Cultural Studies (WS 2021/22)
Seminar: Antebellum American Literature (SS 2021)
Seminar: Climate Fiction (WS 2020/21)
Publications
Pingler, Marina. “The ‘Colonial Anthropocene’ Imaginary: Re-Imagining Climate Change in Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018).” JAAS, special issue “Narrative, Environment, Social Justice,” vol. 5, no. 2, 2024, pp. 142-62. doi:10.47060/jaaas.v5i2.198.
“‘With All Those Places to Live, How Come Nobody’s Anywhere?’– The Great Silence and Elegy for the Planet in Richard Powers’ Bewilderment (2021) and Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest (2021).” (American Soundscapes: 70th Annual Meeting of the German Association of American Studies, University of Oldenburg, May 24, 2024)
“The Colonial Anthropocene Imaginary: Settler Colonialism, Capitalism and Climate Change in Literature and Activism.” (Visiting Scholars Seminar, Havard University, Comparative Literature Department, March 7, 2024)
“Disrupting the Universality of the Anthropocene: The Captivity Narrative in Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018).” (“Disrupting Imaginations: Annual Conference Science Fiction Research Association, University of Dresden, August 19, 2023)
“Alternative Modes of Future-Making: The Anthropocene and Its Imaginaries.” (“The Failure of Knowledge – Knowledges of Failure”, University of Mannheim, May 4, 2023).
“The Anthropocene: A Return to Grand Narratives? – Ontology and Postcolonial Critique in Indigenous Speculative Fiction." (“Crises of the Universal in Anglophone Literatures and Criticism,” Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Paris, March 30, 2023).
“Scaling up the Imagination in Narrative: Climate Change in Steven Amsterdam‘s Things We Didn‘t See Coming (2009).” As Part of the Lecture Series “American Short Story: Theory, History, Cultural Contexts,” University of Tübingen, 1. February 2023.
“Cli-Fi: Re-Imagining Climate Change in American Literature and Culture.” As Part of the Lecture Series “Issues in American Literary & Cultural History IV: From World War II to the Present,” University of Tübingen, 26. January 2023.
“Grassroots Convergence – Star Trek Fandom: Axanar Productions and the Final Frontier of Fan-Fiction Law.” (As Part of the Lecture Series “Introduction to Cultural Studies,” University Tübingen, January, 2023).
“The Colonial Anthropocene Imaginary: Re-Imagining Climate Futures in Speculative Fiction.” (Narrative, Environment, Social Justice: Annual Conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS), University of Salzburg, 22. October 2022).
“Alternative Climate Imaginaries: Re-Imagining Climate Futures in Speculative Fiction.” (Ambivalences of Ecological Transformations: Perspectives from the Environmental Humanities, Augsburg, 25. June 2022).
“Alternative Climate Imaginaries: Re-Imagining Climate Futures in Speculative Fiction.” (Political Education and American Studies: 68th Annual Meeting of the German Association of American Studies, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, 11. June 2022).
“Re-Imagining Climate Futures: Alternative Imaginaries in American Literature and Culture.” (HCA Spring Academy, Heidelberg Center for American Studies, 21-25. March 2022).
“Indigenous Futurisms – A Transnational Response to Ontological Conflicts: Moving Beyond a 'One-World World' in Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves" (“Transnational Relations: Past, Present, and Future”, Annual Postgraduate Forum, 02. December 2021).
“Ontological Conflicts in the Face of Climate Change: Moving Beyond a ‘One-World World’ in Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves” (Environmental Displacements, Workshop, University of Augsburg, 07. Oktober 21)
