This lecture asks: What does it mean to think about our present moment with fermenting? Shifting scales to the microbial, where humans interact with fungi and bacteria in the most intimate manner—preparing food with them, eating alongside them, and eating them—fermentation means recognizing ourselves as one amongst many. Tracing the ways in which specific food preparation processes are developed and co-opted as political messaging, fermentation can lead us to querying the various meanings of prepping, and perhaps unpacking the performances of the trad-wife. Considering the way some anthropological documents trace the emergence of agriculture to the brewing of alcohol, thinking with fermentation can mean asking what makes us human. This lecture will employ fermentation as a way of thinking about more-than-human entanglements in the present; of thinking about “domesticated decomposition” (Sheldrake) as a lens for cultural studies inquiry; and of working through the affordances of new materialism, the environmental humanities and material practices more broadly.

Kylie Crane is Professor of British and American Cultural Studies at the University of Rostock. She is the author of Myths of Wilderness in Contemporary Narratives (Palgrave, 2012) and, more recently, Concrete and Plastic: Thinking through Materiality (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024, available open access). Her current work centers questions of the environment and (material) practices of the everyday.