Narrating Environmental Citizenship. Norwegian picturebooks and comics in the Anthropocene
The variety in the narratives underlines that a more nuanced examination of picturebooks and comics is both fruitful and necessary in order to take the complexity of children’s literature seriously when it comes to environmental questions.
Berit Martha Christel Huntebrinker
PhD Candidate
You may follow the disputation online. Link for registration as an online spectator at the bottom of this page.
The disputation will be held in Scandinavian languages.
Berit Martha Christel Huntebrinker of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of Agder has submitted her thesis entitled «Narrating Environmental Citizenship. Norwegian picturebooks and comics in the Anthropocene» and will defend the thesis for the PhD-degree Tuesday 17 January 2023.
She has followed the PhD programme at the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of Agder, with Spesialisation in literary studies.
Summary of the thesis by Berit Huntebrinker :
Narrating environmental citizenship: Norwegian picturebooks and comics in the Anthropocene
In my project, I examine how aspects of “environmental citizenship” are discussed in Norwegian picturebooks and comics.
The term “environmental citizenship” encompasses several concepts that originate from political sciences and discuss what it can mean to be a responsible, or “good”, citizen with regard to the environment.
The concepts are characterised by various understandings of what citizenship means and which role the environment and its intrinsic value play.
Common for the concepts is an argument for the need to change something in our behaviour towards the world we live in.
An econarratological perspective
I examine seven multimodal texts in my dissertation, four picturebooks and three comics, published between 1974 and 2019.
My theoretical approach is based on econarratology, a direction in literary studies that combines an ecocritical perspective with particular attention to narratological questions, or the texts’ narrative structures.
- How is the texts’ multimodal “storyworld” presented and which role does the environment play in it?
- How are aspects of environmental citizenship discussed through verbal text and pictures?
- And how do the texts address readers to convey perspectives on the environment?
These are some of the questions I discuss in the analytical chapters of my dissertation.
Main findings
It shows itself that multimodal texts for young readers present various understandings of what it means to be an environmentally aware citizen.
The texts foreground different aspects as important when it comes to our relationship with the environment and how we can live more environmentally friendly.
The variety in the narratives underlines that a more nuanced examination of picturebooks and comics is both fruitful and necessary in order to take the complexity of children’s literature seriously when it comes to environmental questions.
Disputation facts:
The trial lecture and the public defence will take place in Gabriel Scott's Auditorium B1 001, Campus Kristiansand and online via the Zoom conferencing app - registration link below.
Professor Gunhild Kvåle, Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of Agder, will chair the disputation.
The trial lecture Tuesday 17 January at 10:00 hours
Public defense Tuesday 17 January at kl 12:00 hours
Given topic for trial lecture: «Miljøtematikk i den politiske barnelitteraturen i Norge på 1970-tallet» ("Environmental themes in the political literature for children in Norway in the 1970s"
Thesis Title: «Narrating Environmental Citizenship. Norwegian picturebooks and comics in the Anthropocene»
Search for the thesis in AURA - Agder University Research Archive, a digital archive of scientific papers, theses and dissertations from the academic staff and students at the University of Agder.
The thesis is available here:
The Candidate: Berit Martha Christel Huntebrinker (1991, Simmern/Hunsrück, Tyskland) Magister's degree in General and comparative literary studies, Nordic and Latin American studies, Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 2016. Title og Magister's Thesis: «(Un-) Möglich (-Es) Erzählen. Über die Problematik der Darstellung von Erfahrungen aus dem Konzentrationslager bei Primo Levi und Imre Kertesz». Present position: Assistant Professor at Department of Nordic and Media Studies, University of Agder.
Opponents:
First opponent: Professor Anna Nordenstam, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Second opponent: Professor Jonas Bakken, University of Oslo, Norway
Associate Professor Sigurd Tenningen, Department of Nordic and Media Studies, University of Agder, is appointed as the administrator for the assessment committee.
Supervisors in the doctoral work were Professor Reinhard Hennig, University of Agder (main supervisor) and Professor Svein Slettan, University of Agder (co-supervisor)
What to do as an online audience member:
The disputation is open to the public, but to follow the trial lecture and the public defence online, transmitted via the Zoom conferencing app, you have to register as an audience member on this link:
https://uiano.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5cvcu6rqj8pH93OD3RcIX2iQzw4kgqpylhB
A Zoom-link will be returned to you. (Here are introductions for how to use Zoom: support.zoom.us if you cannot join by clicking on the link.)
We ask online audience members to join the virtual trial lecture at 09:50 at the earliest and the public defense at 11:50 at the earliest. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time. Further, we ask online audience members to turn off their microphone and camera and keep them turned off throughout the event. You do this at the bottom left of the image when in Zoom. We recommend you use ‘Speaker view’. You select that at the top right corner of the video window when in Zoom.
Opponent ex auditorio:
The chair invites members of the public to pose questions ex auditorio in the introduction to the public defense. Deadline is during the break between the two opponents. The person asking questions should have read the thesis. For online audience the Contact Persons e-mail are available in the chat function during the Public Defense, and questions ex auditorio can be submitted to Gunhild Kvåle on e-mail gunhild.kvale@uia.no