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Environmental issues have received significant attention in German Studies for a number of years, leading to innovations in both research and pedagogy. More recently, attention has focused on applied pedagogical practices such as service‐learning projects and bilateral exchanges related to environmental sustainability. While these initiatives offer numerous potential benefits, as shown in research on high‐impact practices, and while the topic may attract students to learn German, these forms of teaching entail a range of challenges and questions for educators that are distinct from the work traditionally carried out in German language pedagogy. This co‐authored article offers resources for working through these challenges and introduces a collection of free online materials currently in development. We suggest a model of critical environmental thinking in the classroom that asks students to use the target language to reexamine familiar concepts and daily practices connected to the environment and apply their knowledge of other cultures to multimodal projects.

The complex narrative composition of image and text in Max Frisch’s Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän discloses entanglements between humans and nonhuman entities that impact the narrative and that demand careful consideration. The story depicts the aging protagonist’s struggle with memory loss and his careful examination of the valley’s mountain formations in fear of a landslide. In this analysis, I show that both of these threats can be read as entangled with nonhuman agents. By focusing on the material dimension of the text, two central and related shifts occur: the background element of rain becomes foregrounded in the narrative, and the natural formations of the valley that are assumed to be static are revealed to be dynamic. These shifts lead to an interpretation of Frisch’s text focused on the impacts of rain and the temporal scale of the text’s geologic dimension. Approaching the text through the lens of material ecocriticism unveils the multiple agencies at play, decenters the human, and illustrates the embodied experience of climate change.

Despite Peter Handke’s frequent focus on landscape and nature, his writing has rarely been considered by ecocritics as environmental. His recent fictional work, Versuch über den Pilznarren (Essay about the Mushroom Fool), details one man’s increasingly intense fascination with mushrooms, his eventual disappearance, and ultimate transformation into a “mushroom fool.” This essay examines the role of the mushrooms in Handke’s 2013 work as commentary on the reciprocal relationship between humans and nonhumans that warrants serious consideration, rather than theme or metaphor. In this article, I employ the lens of material ecocriticism to explore the dynamic material interplays and shared agencies between the mushroom, mushroom hunter, and the space of mushroom collecting. The analysis focuses in particular on border regions—of the human body and the forest in particular—to trace the mushroom’s role in the narrative and meaning in making. Key words: mushrooms, material ecocriticism, trans-corporeality, Peter Handke, Austrian studies

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