ecocriticism and environmental studies

Title: Posthuman Animals in 21st Century Texts

Organizers: 

Monica Sousa

York University

msousa93@yorku.ca

Jerika Sanderson

University of Waterloo

j9sander@uwaterloo.ca

CFP Text:

Artists and writers have long been deconstructing dominant notions of the American West. In 1957, jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins released Way Out West, a record that drew inspiration from California landscapes, TV Westerns, and overlooked Black cowboys. The album cover depicts Rollins outfitted as a gunfighter in desert surrounds, complete with cacti and a sun-bleached cattle skull. Where you might expect to find a big iron on his hip, he cradles his tenor sax. Today, artists like Orville Peck continue to revise, rewrite, and expand the boundaries of what we might consider the story of the West both in sound, style, and location—the South African-born crooner, now based out of Canada, has gained major success on the U.S.

Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”

July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon

What are the possibilities—and limitations—of investigating commonalities between the plant and the human for discovering new forms of trans, nonbinary, and genderfluid sexualities? How might the study of vegetal forms of agency trouble the very notion of sexual subjectivity as something that originates inside an individual, rather than its environment? Given the role of botany as both a sexual and colonial science, how do postcolonial authors create new rhetorical relations to plant life to express not only queer sexual identities, but the specificities of postcolonial identity more broadly?

Please find below two calls for proposals for a special issue and a conference panel dedicated to Elsa Morante. Please notice that they have two different submission deadlines.

1. CFP Annali d’italianistica 42 (2024) -  50 Years of La Storia: Elsa Morante Beyond History 

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

Abstracts are invited for the book titled Staying Together: NatureCulture in a Changing World contracted by Lexington Books, Rowman and Littlefield. Contributors include: Caren Irr (Brandeis University), Alf Hornborg (Lund University), Dominic Boyer (Rice University), Subhankar Banerjee (The University of New Mexico), Scott Slovic (University of Idaho), Lenka Filipova (Freie Universitat, Berlin), Nikoleta Zampaki (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece), Micheal Northcott (University of Edinburgh & Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia) and others. The book will come out in 2023. 

Fear, Risk and Safety: Post-Millennial Cultures of Fear in Literature (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) 

https://www.cambridgescholars.com/uploads/sbpub_sub/GEC%20Chapter%20Call...

The Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses (RCEI) seeks two more submissions for a special issue on “Toxic Tales: Narratives of Waste in Post-Industrial North America,” guest-edited by Elsa del Campo Ramírez (Universidad Nebrija) and Sara Villamarín-Freire (Universidade da Coruña), to be published in spring 2023. 

Articles are expected to be 6,000-7,000 words in length and should be submitted by November 30th. Questions and submissions should be sent to Sara (sara.vfreire@udc.es) or Elsa (ecampo@nebrija.es).

"Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal."  This statement of of Aristotle is often interpreted as nonhumans not being concerned with politics and that politics is a prerogative of humans only. Political associations in a human society are often restricted to humans. However, contemporary research in ethology suggests that nonhuman communities and their associations are highly political. Similarly, the sixth mass extinction and the climate crisis have compelled humans to acknowledge that non-humans have always been a part of their political discourse and actions.  We invite papers that discuss humans and non-humans in political discourses and narratives.

In “Land Sickness”, Nikolaj Schultz describes how he goes on vacation to “detach from the material consequences of [his] existence,” but upon arrival on a French island, he is once more faced with the material reality of existence, as the island’s coastline is eroding, caused by rising sea levels and the pressure of foreign tourism. He writes: “Neither Pareto, Marx or Bourdieu died in vain, but none of them offer a language sufficient to articulate the geo-social struggle for territory that unfolds on the island. I myself lack a language to understand what is happening.” How indeed, does one think and write about the world that is disappearing under our feet? 

Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) Joint Conference — Portland, OR, July 9-12, 2023

Narrative at the Dull Edge of Extinction

Event:    Ingenium2023 LAS VEGAS

Hosted on the campus of the University of Nevada--Las Vegas (UNLV)

in the Student Union Ballrooms

May 22-25, 2023

Produced by:   IngeniumCreatives    

Contact:   cathy.allen@unlv.edu

Submission Deadline:    January 28, 2023

Submission Proposal link:  Ingenium 2023 Proposal Form

"This is You Beyond You": Representing the Present through Speculative Futures

Seminar proposal for ACLA's annual meeting

https://www.acla.org/you-beyond-you-representing-present-through-specula...

"This is you beyond you. After and with the consequences of fracking past peak oil. After and with the defunding of the humanities. ... After the end of the world. After the ways we have been knowing the world" -- Pauline Gumbs, M Archive

“Tell me,” he says, “have you ever heard of something called a moon?” -- NK Jemisin, The Fifth Season

The College English Association, a gathering of scholar-teachers in English studies, welcomes proposals for presentations on Travel and Literature for our 52nd annual conference, March 30-April 1, 2023, in San Antonio, Texas. Submit your 250-500 word abstract at https://www.conftool.pro/cea2023.  

This panel invites discussions on the contemporary politics of the “safe animal” in literature and media—in all the registers and valences of “safe.” An overworked but underexplored cultural trope, safe animals are constantly in demand across various forms of popular media: animal memes and pet-related small talk are the safest conversation starters, “cute” cat pictures always promise to comfort, and ample cultural scaffolding is in place to help us stick to animals that are safe. For example, the website Does the Dog Die, a crowdsourced platform for “emotional spoilers” about movies and other popular media, promises to protect viewers from “upsetting” material including the death of animals.