Nature at Work: Reinterpreting Danish Rural Literature in the Age of Ecological Crisis

TRANSITION Dialogue with Anne Fastrup and Tue Andersen Nexø, University of Copenhagen.

In this session of TRANSITION Dialogues, we welcome Anne Fastrup and Tue Andersen Nexø (University of Copenhagen) to explore their collaborative project Nature at Work.

Agriculture has long shaped Denmark’s landscapes and cultural imaginaries. Yet as ecological crises deepen, the practices and paradigms of industrial farming are increasingly contested. Nature at Work revisits a largely overlooked tradition of Danish rural literature – spanning from Jeppe Aakjær to Mathilde Walter Clark – to investigate how literature has engaged with agricultural transformation and its ecological consequences.

Fastrup and Nexø examine how literary works represent the labor imposed on nature and the entangled human and more-than-human lives that emerge from it. Through their readings, they offer new perspectives on agriculture as both world-making and world-unmaking – inviting us to reflect on how literature can help us rethink ecological interdependence in times of crisis.

TRANSITION Dialogues invite thinkers and practitioners from all fields to explore current issues in rural–urban relations. Dialogue-based and open, these sessions aim to create spaces for critical reflection and to nuance our understanding of changing urban and rural lives. So come and join the conversation.

Register for the event.