‘My consciousness flowing’: Outdoor Swimming and the Immediacy of Water in Roger Deakin’s Waterlog and Victoria Whiteworth’s Swimming with Seals
‘My consciousness flowing’: Outdoor Swimming and the Immediacy of Water in Roger Deakin’s Waterlog and Victoria Whiteworth’s Swimming with Seals
with Dr. Imke Lichterfeld | IAAK, University of Bonn
Thursday, 16 January 2025 | 6:00 c.t. 8:00 pm | 53111 Bonn | Rabinstraße 8 | Room 6
Roger Deakin’s famous “amphibious journey” Waterlog 1999 supposedly increased the popularity of outdoor swimming and texts about swimming in wild waters, such as Victoria Whitworth’s mythologically inspired Swimming with Seals 2017, have multiplied - a trend that coincides with an increasing interest in nature writing and ecocritical perspectives In her talk, Dr. Imke Lichterfeld analyses how these two autobiographical accounts depict the physical and psychological, transient yet inspiring effects of water on human bodies. Matter-of-factly in tone, Deakin's renderings are as impressive and inspirational, Imke Lichterfeld holds, as Whitworth’s historical and philosophical reflections on the sensual “obliteration of the self” in cold water.
Dr. Imke Lichterfeld is a lecturer and the Studies Coordinator at the Department of English, American and Celtic Studies at the University of Bonn. Her research focuses on early modern drama her recent interests include the blue humanities, which inspired her course “We Write in Water” and a module on sea creatures.
This event is part of the lecture series "Current Issues in the North American and Cultural Studies" of the North American Studies Program of the University of Bonn.