Jacob Hovde

E-Mail: jacob.hovde@fau.de

Jacob Hovde holds a master’s degree in British and North American Cultural Studies from the University of Freiburg. After studying political science at the University of Mannheim, followed by a B.A. in History and English at the University of Freiburg, he developed a strong interest in how cultural and media studies scholars can contribute meaningfully to central issues in public discourse, particularly in the fields of urban studies and environmental humanities. He understands Bruno Latour’s call to “faire le boulot” as his mission statement: to render environmentalist messaging more effective and to conceive new narratives that offer alternatives to ultraconservative or neoliberal ideology. In this vein, Hovde completed his master’s thesis, Exploring Adequate Images for Hyperobjects: Toward a Postmodern Environmental Ontology.

Project: Bridging the Sentimental Gap: Climate Change Cinema and Attuning to Hyperobjects

Following decades of climate change communication, the information deficit – once identified as the primary roadblock to collective awareness and subsequent action – has largely been addressed. Yet, green initiatives are losing the momentum that reactionary political movements, which ignore or actively reverse climate mitigation efforts, are simultaneously gaining. This dynamic coincides with and is fueled by a public sentiment displaying growing levels of inertia towards the crisis. Unsurprisingly so, when considering research from environmental humanities suggesting that hard data lacks the cultural response to adequately embed its information. Especially when this data is introduced into an environmental ontology informed by Cartesian dualist notions of the human as an entity distinct from a culturally constructed notion of ‘nature.’ This dissertation argues that sentimental forms of cinema can elicit emotional responses that align with the spatiotemporal and affective dimensions of hyperobjects, fostering deeper audience engagement with the complexities of global warming. It aims to contribute to efforts seeking to address the „crisis of imagination“ identified by Amitav Ghosh and elaborated by Dipesh Chakrabarty and Bruno Latour. Drawing from Morton’s concept of hyperobjects, as well as the growing research on the affective dimensions of visual representations, the study seeks to identify sentimental aesthetic strategies that enable audiences to emotionally connect with the hyperobject of climate change. Close readings of selected cinematic texts will be employed to infer a grammar of environmental sentimentality – a set of aesthetic and narrative guidelines informing emotionally resonant environmental representations that weaken the felt disconnection from the phenomenon and, in the long term, inspire meaningful action in the face of the climate crisis.