Hanna Teichler (Frankfurt): “Transoceanic Memory. Environment, Narrative and Temporality in Anglophone Literature” | Transoceanic Exchanges

Tuesday, 3 February 2026, 2pm-4pm CET
Campus Westend, Hörsaalzentrum, room HZ 8

Co-organised by Prof. Dr. Nadia Butt and Prof. Dr. Barbara Alge, funded by ZIAF.

The lecture series is part of the Forum of Global Anglophone Literatures and Cultures.

Hanna Teichler (University of Frankfurt, Germany)

This lecture introduces two formative scholarly and discursive paradigms: memory and the Anthropocene. The environmental turn in the humanities is emblematic of our times, as climate crises and all-pervasive environmental decline are long-term developments that increasingly attract short-term attention. By the same token, the 20^th century has seen a ‘boom’ in exploring how and what collectives remember. Recently, more and more scholarship emerges that investigates the connection between memory and environment, ecocriticism, and between memory cultures and the Anthropocene.

The notion that oceanic spaces frame identity has been established already, especially in the context of postcolonial studies, but these spaces have not been used as frameworks to theorize memory. In this lecture, I conceptualize transoceanic memory (studies) as an approach to both memory and environment; as mode, method and material of remembering. Transoceanic memory emerges when we leave behind land-based configurations of history and identity, and trace how memory creates and reveals geomnemonic spaces, which offer alternative frameworks to established geopolitical formations.

Transoceanic memory fictions as my primary material of study make use of environmental formations in the text to make a point about such spatiotemporal dynamics in processes of remembering. These formations can exert influence on the textual composition, as they often contribute to framing plot and narrative. Through an analysis of a select body of Anglophone novels, I show how transoceanic memory is encoded in environmental textual forms; in water bodies, archipelagic and littoral structures, in monsoon winds or migrant species, as they feature in the fictional texts.

Bio Note:

Dr. Hanna Teichler is a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of English and American Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt. She specializes in Anglophone literatures, memory studies, transoceanic literatures and cultures, environmental humanities, as well as postcolonial literatures. Hanna co-directs the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform with Astrid Erll. She is the co-editor of the book series Mobilizing Memories and the Handbook Series in Memory Studies (with Rebekah Vince, both DeGruyterBrill).In 2023, Hanna co-founded a new journal in memory studies, the Memory Studies Review (DeGruyterBrill, with Justyna Tabaszewska, Erol Gülüm, and Paul Leworthy).