Jessica J. Lee: »The Wilder World: Retreating from the Peace and Quiet of Nature«

‘The Wilder World: Retreating from the Peace and Quiet of Nature’

– with Stefan Willer

‘When despair for the world grows in me […] I come into the peace of wild things,’ writes Wendell Berry, capturing a sentiment that is just as prevalent in today’s nature writing as it was in 1968, when his poem was published.

‘Go out into nature and find solace,’ people often say. This advice runs like a common thread through our world: in adverts for wellness retreats, in posts by ‘Tradwife’ influencers, on the pages of best-selling nature writing books. They aren’t entirely wrong, but it isn’t the whole picture.

This talk explores the extent to which a retreat into nature actually involves a confrontation with humanity’s difficulties, privileges, injustices, acts of violence and even hopes. Drawing on her experience as an author and editor within the genre often referred to as ‘New Nature Writing’, JESSICA J. LEE will examine how contemporary nature writers reject the portrayal of nature as a place of peace, comfort and recuperation, and instead find fertile ground for re-examining issues of environmental crises, colonial legacies, gender, race and the body. She will trace stories of political resistance to the privatisation of land, of artists who reject the notion of ‘healing’ in nature, and of those who are reimagining nature writing as a space to unpack the legacies of migration and loss. How can people learn from these authors’ attempts to retell their relationship with nature? And what stories are still waiting to be heard, amidst the overwhelming calls to find oneself by venturing into the wilderness?

JESSICA J. LEE: Author and environmental historian; founder and editor of the literary journal ‘The Willowherb Review’, and Faculty Mentor in Creative Non-fiction at King’s College in Halifax. In 2016, she completed her PhD in environmental history and aesthetics at York University and was Writer-in-Residence at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin from 2017 to 2018.

With *Turning* [2017], *Two Trees Make a Forest* [2019] and *Dispersals* [2024], she is the author of three books of nature writing in which she explores, amongst other things, questions of belonging and otherness, as well as the relationship between humans and the environment. She is also co-editor of the essay collection *Dog Hearted* [2023] and published the children’s book *A Garden Called Home* in 2024.

For her literary work, she has been honoured with, amongst others, the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-fiction, the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature and the Banff Mountain Book Award.

The event will be held in English.

An overview of the lecture series

‘Alone together. Figures of loneliness between pathology and euphoria’

Loneliness, as an involuntary form of being alone, is one of the major causes for concern in Western industrial societies. Not least, the experiences of the pandemic have brought the societal consequences of social isolation into sharp relief and placed them at the centre of public attention. Today, loneliness is increasingly recorded statistically as a ‘burden of loneliness’, diagnosed as a symptom of ‘lost communities’ and addressed politically as a societal risk. Countermeasures range from socio-medical prevention programmes and national strategy papers to the establishment of dedicated political offices.

The ubiquity of the diagnosis of loneliness forms the starting point for the Mosse Lectures in the winter semester 2026/27.

Moving beyond a purely pathological perspective, the focus will be on the fundamental ambivalence of experiences of loneliness, as already expressed in the conceptual distinction between ‘loneliness’ and ‘solitude’. Figures of loneliness have been and continue to be depicted in philosophy, literature, music and the visual arts, appearing not only as an expression of social isolation but also as a prerequisite for aesthetic experience, existential self-reflection and individual freedom. In the 19th century, the proponents of a programmatic, at times euphorically charged conception of loneliness in modernity linked the retreat into nature with projects of nature writing

The Mosse Lectures explore the vitality of this tradition in contemporary literature, film and popular culture, examining in particular the relationship between ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘Lonesome Hero’, female, male and queer figures of solitude caught between isolation and self-determination, as well as the gender-specific, cultural and political codings of being alone.

The lecture series is complemented by an accompanying film programme, which will be screened over six evenings in January and February 2027 in collaboration with the Zeughauskino at the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

Further events in this series:

– Janosch Schobin: ‘Loneliness: the social issue of our time?’ | Thu, 5 November 2026

– Diane Enns: ‘The Ambiguity of Solitude’ | Thu, 3 December 2026

– Christian Petzold: ‘Ghosts’ | Thu, 14 January 2027

Accompanying film programme at the Zeughauskino of the DHM Berlin [Pei Building]:

12 January 2027, 7.00 pm

Inner Security [Germany 2000, dir: Christian Petzold]

19 January 2027, 7 pm

*Certain Women* [USA 2016, dir: Kelly Reichardt]

26 January 2027, 7 pm

All of Us Strangers [UK/USA 2023, dir: Andrew Haigh]

2 February 2027, 7.00 pm

Her [USA 2013, dir: Spike Jonze]

9 February 2027, 7.00 pm

Perfect Days [Germany/Japan 2023, dir: Wim Wenders]

16 February 2027, 7 pm

Days [Taiwan 2020, dir: Tsai Ming-liang]