Virtual Exhibition “Amitav Ghosh in Munich: Inspiration, Insights, and Storytelling”

We at the Rachel Carson Center are excited to announce the release of the virtual exhibition “Amitav Ghosh in Munich: Inspiration, Insights, and Storytelling,” curated by Hanna Straß-Senol, Franziska Bax, and Anna Antonova. The exhibition has emerged from Amitav Ghosh’s visit to the Rachel Carson Center in the autumn of 2024 as part of the initiative “One Book—Many Worlds: Munich Reads Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh” (funded by the Volkswagen Foundation under the wider “Strengthening the Environmental Humanities” project). Using Ghosh’s novel Gun Island (2019) as a vantage point, the exhibition explores the role of literary fiction in interdisciplinary academic exchange and climate communication outside of academia, bringing together scholarly reflections, creative writing, and artistic responses.

Amitav Ghosh in Munich, Große Aula of LMU Munich, 20 November 2024. From left to right: Christof Mauch, Theresa Hilz, Hanna Straß-Senol, Amitav Ghosh, Anna Antonova, Franziska Bax, and Lena Engel. © Swantje Furtak. All rights reserved.

A multidisciplinary group of contributors engages with various aspects of Gun Island, drawing on storylines and narrative elements to allow a multifocal engagement with the multiple social and ecological repercussions of climate change.

Six chapters present the personal engagement with Gun Island by authors from different academic backgrounds, all of whom took an active part in discussions provoked by Ghosh’s book and visit during the fall and winter of 2024–2025. These contributions include “On Opium and Imperialism” by Nakul Heroor, “In Flux” by Laura Otto, “Ten Theses on Climate Justice and Migration” by Markus Vogt, “Using Climate Fiction for Community Engagement” by Julia Ludewig, “Climate Communication in Education Beyond Academia” by Sabina Magagnoli, and “Coda: Narrating the ‘Everthing Crisis’” by Hanna Straß-Senol.

Ten chapters are dedicated to the winning contributions and honorary mentions of “Tell the Untold! An Environmental Writing Competition of the Rachel Carson Center,” held in 2025. The winning pieces are “The Mangrove Doesn’t Forget” by Rachel Desiree Felix, “Whale Fall” by Michaela Vieser, and “Time After the Hero—Or, in Proposing the Age of the Anthropoiescene” by Zana Fraillon. The honorable mentions are “JUDAS DONKEY” by Abi Andrews, “Tales from Coral Country” by Isaac Yuen, “A Few Hazy Anthropocenes” by Tathagat Bhatia, “What Cannot Be Unearthed” by Wan Yin Kim Fung, “How to Reimagine Our Doomed Futures Through Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lens” by Vera Krause, and “The Story of Geology” by Sonji Shah.

Interspersed among the contributions are art pieces inspired by Gun Island and created for the student exhibition taumelnd trauen, verschlungen bleiben (to dare to trust tumbling while drawing strength from unending entanglements), which was run in May 2025. You can read more about taumelnd trauen, verschlungen bleiben in Franziska Bax’s chapter, “On Curating a Student Exhibition.”

Citation
Straß-Senol, Hanna, Franziska Bax, and Anna Antonova. “Amitav Ghosh in Munich: Inspirations, Insights, and Storytelling.” Environment & Society Portal, Virtual Exhibitions 2026, no. 1. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. https://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/9945.