Sushant Pathak successfully defended his thesis on “Material-Ecocritical Relationally in Juli Zeh’s Unterleuten” and completed his M.A. in Germanic Studies.
His thesis looks at how the characters in Juli Zeh’s novel Unterleuten (2016) relate to the natural world around them—for instance land, wind, animals, and forests—and how these relationships shape their lives. The story takes place in a small fictional village called Unterleuten, where the arrival of a renewable energy company planning to build a wind farmdisrupts the everyday lives and relationships of the villagers. By examining how the characters’ connections to the land and environment influence their decisions and conflicts, the thesis shows that human actions cannot be understood in isolation from the natural and material world around them. It highlights how both human and nonhuman actors participate in shaping the social and emotional life of this fictional village community. (Lay Summary)
The thesis was published at UBC cIRcle.
