ecocriticism and environmental studies

Developing a discussion initiated in the recently-published Literary Geographies 6(1), the journal’s editors seek contributions to an expanded ‘Thinking Space’ section on ‘Literary Geographies in Isolation’ planned for the December issue. We are interested in receiving shorter submissions of 1500-3000 words, including the more personal, polemical or impressionistic. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• armchair tourism in lockdown

• reading as virtual fieldwork

The word “Geopoethics” comes from gē (meaning, “earth”), poiesis (meaning, “to create”) and ethics. The poiesis in Geopoethics has a sort of Heideggerian “bringing-forth” of the earth, not as something which was hitherto absent but by bringing something from concealment to unconcealment, from darkness to light. The earth is “brought into the light (or clearing) opened up by the created work itself” (Whitehead 2003). Geopoethics is about “thinking” (noein) the ‘always, already’, constituting not only the idea of the earth but the earth itself. It is not only the poetry but the process of creation itself (poiesis).

Abstract This panel will seek to explore the changing relationship between scientific paradigms and society’s self-understanding as it is manifest in the novel form. If the novel itself has functioned as a record of the social imagination—a narrative ideologeme as Jameson describes it – this social imagination often borrowed its models from contemporary natural philosophy and later the social sciences. We see examples of this in Balzac’s use of taxonomical zoology, Sterne’s use of Cartesian “animal spirits,” or Joyce’s phylogenetic process in “Oxen of the Sun.” Some of the questions this panel will ask include: how do naturalistic sociological models help to mediate political and aesthetic theories? How do these models affect stylistic developments?

Special-Issue Proposal Guidelines

Papers on Language and Literature is seeking proposals for special issues on subjects including but not limited to

Digital Humanities

Film

Literary Translation

Print Culture

PLL is a generalist publication that is committed to publishing work on a variety of literatures, languages, and chronological periods. We accept proposals year-round. We are a quarterly and expect to publish a special issue once a year, every year. The specific volume and issue will be determined later, depending on the editors’ schedule.