Ecologies of Attention: Literature and Pedagogies of the More-than-Human
Today's ecological problems demand not only ecological awareness but also a fundamental rethinking of the human-nature relationship with the more-than-human world. Increased climatic change, species extinction, ecological degradation, and planetary instability. Challenge anthropocentric assumptions where humans are seen as separate from, superior to, or sole interpreters of nature.
This panel invites papers that explore how literature, storytelling, environmental humanities, and creative pedagogies might cultivate “ecologies of attention” within teacher education and educational spaces. Rather than approaching nature as a passive object of study or a resource for human learning, the session seeks to examine how literary and cultural texts unsettle human-centered ways of knowing and open possibilities for relational, more-than-human pedagogies.
How might literature invite future educators to engage with ecological interconnectedness, multispecies agency, and nonhuman forms of intelligence, communication, and temporality? What pedagogical possibilities emerge when teachers and learners encounter forests, rivers, plants, animals, weather systems, and landscapes not as background settings, but as active participants within shared ecological worlds? How can educational practices move beyond extractive or instrumental approaches to environmental learning toward forms of attentiveness, reciprocity, care, and ethical coexistence?
The panel is particularly interested in pedagogical and creative engagements that explore how literary and speculative texts reshape ecological imagination and challenge anthropocentric assumptions within teacher education, curriculum studies, literacy practices, and environmental pedagogy.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Ecocriticism and teacher education
- Pedagogies of the more-than-human
- Literature and ecological attentiveness
- Climate fiction and environmental pedagogy
- Multispecies storytelling and relational learning
- Posthumanism and educational philosophy
- Ecological imagination in literacy education
- Biosemiotics, ecological communication, and pedagogy
- Plant studies, animal studies, and arboreal thinking in education
- Indigenous ecological knowledge and decolonial pedagogies
- Eco-poetry, speculative fiction, and climate narratives in the classroom
- Slow pedagogies, ecological temporality, and relational learning
- Environmental ethics and pedagogies of coexistence
- Creative-critical approaches to ecological teaching and learning
- Affective responses to climate anxiety, grief, and ecological uncertainty
- The curriculum, sustainability, and more than human relationality are explored.
- Reading practices that decenter the human subject.
- Ecological storytelling and pedagogies oriented towards the future.
The session invites interdisciplinary, theoretical, pedagogical, creative-critical, and practice-based contributions from scholars, educators, teacher educators, creative writers, and Researchers in the fields of literature, education, environmental humanities, and cultural studies and related fields.
Papers engaging works such as The Overstory, How I Became a Tree, The Ministry for the Future, The Grapes of Wrath, Climate Fiction, eco-poems, speculations, and Environmental media are particularly welcome, although not restricted to these texts.
Submission Guidelines
Please submit:
- An abstract of 250–300 words
- A short bio-note (100 words)
- Institutional affiliation (if applicable)
Please send submissions to: mussaratshahid@fccollege.edu.pk
Submission Deadline: September 30, 2026