Collaborations
In the past years, I have immensely enjoyed collaborating with colleagues leading to several co-edited volumes.
Mountains and the German Mind
(2020)
The first scholarly English translations of thirteen vital texts that elucidate the central role mountains have played across nearly five centuries of Germanophone cultural history. Mountains have occupied a central place in German, Swiss, and Austrian intellectual culture for centuries. This volume offers the first scholarly English translations of thirteen key texts from the Germanophone tradition of engagement with mountains. The selected texts span over 450 years, ranging from the early modern period to the postmodern era, and encompass several discursive modes of the mountain experience including geographical descriptions, philosophical meditations, aesthetic deliberations, and autobiographical climbing narratives. Well-known figures covered in this translational sourcebook include Conrad Gessner, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, G.W.F. Hegel, Alexander von Humboldt, Georg Simmel, Leni Riefenstahl, and Reinhold Messner. Each text is accompanied by a critical introduction that places the translated text within a broader cultural context. The dual translational-interpretational approach offered in this volume is intended to stimulate new international and interdisciplinary dialogue on the cultural history of mountains and mountaineering.
“Mountains and the German Mind will be of interest to students of the American landscape because it discusses global issues relating to mountaineering. [It] seeks to address why mountains are exceptional landscapes which deserve greater attention and care, to the detriment of . . . ordinary, and possibly more vital, landscapes.”
Maggie Eirenschmalz, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly (2021)
“Ireton and Schaumann offer an excellent guide to the rich recent English- and German language scholarly literature on mountains and mountaineering. The contribution of their own present volume is to offer a series of translations of original texts. Some are translated here for the first time; others are new translations of work either available only in outdated translations or out of print. Each is provided with endnotes that explain historical, geographical and linguistic issues. The admirable introductions which preface the translations contextualize the texts and relate them to the overarching theme of the volume.”
Joachim Whaley, Journal of European History 51.3-4 (2021)
This book gathers thirteen key German nonfiction texts on mountains and mountaineering written by authors from German-speaking regions such as Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and South Tyrol in Italy. With translations and introductions by relevant scholars, these texts are now accessible to English-speaking readers. The translated texts span a period of four hundred and fifty years from early modern to postmodern times and include treatises, travel diaries, book chapters, and excerpts from longer texts.
Martina Gugglberger, German Studies Review 44.2 (2021)
German Ecocriticism in the Anthropocene
(2017)
This book offers essays on both canonical and non-canonical German-language texts and films, advancing ecocritical models for German Studies, and introducing environmental issues in German literature and film to a broader audience. This volume contextualizes the broad-ranging topics and authors in terms of the Anthropocene, beginning with Goethe and the Romantics and extending into twenty-first-century literature and film. Addressing the growing need for environmental awareness in an international humanities curriculum, this book complements ecocritical analyses emerging from North American and British studies with a specifically German Studies perspective, opening the door to a transnational understanding of how the environment plays an integral role in cultural, political, and economic issues.
“Examples of German-language literature and film have featured in eco-critical journals and essay collections before this volume but never as part of a collection defined by the language. It is a bold move that has brought together a wealth of ideas and insights.”
Helen Hughes, Green Letters 24 (2020)
“The title of this volume of collected essays is as programmatic as it is succinct. The adjective “German” marks the disciplinary purview of the essays, which emerged from several conference panels organized by the Trans-Atlantic Network in the Environmental Humanities at the University of Washington and the Environmental Studies Network of the German Studies Association. More than a territorial demarcation, however, this disciplinary choice reflects the editors’ desire to correct the historical belatedness of German Studies (or Germanistik) in embracing ecocriticism.”
Timothy Attanucci, Goethe Yearbook 26 (2019)
Heights of Reflection
(2012)
Mountains have always stirred the human imagination, playing a crucial role in the cultural evolution of peoples around the globe and becoming infused with meaning in the process. Beyond their geographical-geological significance, mountains affect the topography of the mind, whether as objects of peril or attraction, of spiritual enlightenment or existential fulfillment, of philosophical contemplation or aesthetic inspiration. This volume challenges the oversimplified assumption that human interaction with mountains is a distinctly modern development, one that began with the empowerment of the individual in the wake of Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic subjectivity. These essays by European and North American scholars examine the lure of mountains in German literature, philosophy, film, music, and culture from the Middle Ages to the present, with a focus on the interaction between humans and the alpine environment. The contributors consider mountains not as mere symbolic tropes or literary metaphors, but as constituting a tangible reality that informs the experiences and ideas of writers, naturalists, philosophers, filmmakers, and composers. Overall, this volume seeks to provide multiple answers to questions regarding the cultural significance of mountains as well as the physical practice of climbing them.
“I strongly advise readers to pick up this book not only if they are interested in understanding the role of mountains in German (and western European) culture, but also if, like me, they are looking for new methodological challenges and are curious to explore new ways to understand and analyze fields beyond the historiographical canon.”
Wilke Graf von Hardenberg, German Politics and Society 34.3 (2016)
“The editors are to be commended for assembling a collection whose historical depth and breadth of reference make it a resource for scholars of the spatial imagination.”
Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.1 (2014)
“‘Climb ev’ry mountain’, the Mother Abbess urges Maria in The Sound of Music; if this popular cultural reference is missing from Heights of Reflection, its central message is nevertheless observed by its editors, Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann. For their book turns what could have been a tired exercise in Toposforschung into an absorbing and insightful investigation of the mountain as a meeting-point of geology, history and culture.”
Paul Bishop, Journal of European Studies 43.2 (2013)
“In this collection, Ireton (Univ. of Missouri) and Schaumann (Emory Univ.) give extensive, insightful treatment to shifting discursive, cultural, and political valences of mountains in the German imagination. Significantly, each of the 18 contributors as well as the editors has his/her own mountaineering bona fides, listed along with their academic credentials at the end of the volume. As the title indicates, the range of the collection is quite broad.”
J .O. Wipplinger, Choice (2013)