ecocriticism and environmental studies

From the Indian boarding schools of North America to the English curriculum mandate of the British empire, formal education, and the various guises it assumed, was an important instrument for colonial powers to exert dominance over its colonized subjects. The afterlives of such an education continue today through dominant knowledge systems that benefit the few at the expense of the many. This panel seeks papers that aim to disentangle and liberate education from colonial control, so that education can be a vehicle for vital knowledge production and empowerment.

In Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013), Michael Marder posits that plants “are agents in the production of meaning” (35), echoing Jane Bennett’s claim that “the concept of agency [is enlarged] once nonhuman things are figured . . . as actors . . . [and] affective bodies forming assemblages” (Vibrant Matters 21-24).

Genre and Video Games - Science Fiction

We are seeking short chapters of approximately 2500-2700 words for an edited collection on literary genres in video games. We invite submissions for the “science fiction” category of the collection.  

Special issue of Extrapolation (https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journal/extr)

 Call for Proposals: “Science Fictional Ecologies in Contemporary Art”

Due November 1, 2024

Please send abstracts and inquiries to both guest editors:

Guest Editors:

Emiliano Guaraldo, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland: emiliano.guaraldo@unisg.ch

Alison Sperling, Florida State University, USA: asperling@fsu.edu

We are seeking one (1) chapter contribution to Altered Animals: Posthumanism and Technology in 20th and 21st Century Discourse and Narratives (tentatively titled) to be published with Routledge as a part of their series "Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture." Specifically, we seek a chapter that addresses topics of race/postcolonialism in connection with the book's main scope. 

Abstract proposals of 300-500 words are due on August 9th. Please also include a biographical note including institutional affiliation (if any) of 150-200 words, and a bibliography with a minimum of 5 sources.

Event : 

NeMLA's 56th Annual Convention, March 06-09 2024, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Call for Papers

New Perspectives on Walking Women in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures

An International Conference, 28 and 29 March 2025

Warburg-Haus, Hamburg, Germany

FIRST FORUM CONFERENCE 2024—CALL FOR PROPOSALS 

DIVISION OF CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 27TH AND 28TH

This year’s keynote presentation will be given by Dr. Mal Ahern (The University of Washington). The conference will also feature a virtual roundtable with Dr. Shannon Mattern (The University of Pennsylvania) and Dr. Nicole Starosielski (The University of California, Berkeley). 

Infrastructure and Abstraction

“The immaterial has become… immaterial.” 

– Lord Cutler Beckett, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

NeMLA 56th Annual Convention

Philadelphia, PA, 6-9 March 2025

Primary Area / Secondary Area:

French and Francophone / Cultural Studies and Media Studies 

Chair:

Atim Mackin (Harvard University)

New Forms of Revolution in the Francophone World

 Revolutions have always been pivotal moments in the history of societies, but the forms they take are constantly evolving. This panel aims to explore the new forms of revolution within French and Francophone contexts. We seek contributions that question, analyze, and discuss the following aspects (among others):

This panel is being organized as part of NeMLA 2025, centered around the theme of (R)Evolution.

Description:

In dialogue with theorists of (post)humanism, this panel seeks to examine how science fiction has historically been used to bolster erroneous and destructive "scientific" discourses, such as social Darwinism, and, conversely, how science fiction has been used toward revolutionary ends to imagine alternative formations of (post)humanity that defy socially constructed taxonomies and hierarchies.

Abstract: 

The C19 Podcast invites proposals from individuals and collaborators of all ranks for single podcast episodes that offer creative, story-driven analysis of topical events that spark connections to nineteenth-century America. We are especially interested in episodes that help make both the nineteenth-century and the specific disciplinary knowledge of our scholarly community legible and exciting to a wide audience.  As our podcast grows, we seek to expand its potential to engage diverse publics in the civic and cultural life of the past.

The Second Plague Pandemic inflicted unimaginable hurt and triggered multiple crises (demographic, spiritual, political, socio-economic), whose impact informed new artistic and literary modes of expression such as the danse macabre or the carnivalesque. 

This panel examines how writers and artists processed pandemic experiences, both in terms of actual outbreaks and long-term repercussions (such as peasant revolts or multi-generational trauma). Where do we find traces of ‘long plague’ (analogous to ‘long Covid’), and what form do they take? How do pandemic experiences affect collective memory and shared narratives? And what theoretical frameworks might be helpful for studying (post)pandemic discourse in literature and art?

The U.S. South is often a forgotten space within ecocritical discussions, yet it provides fruitful ground for thinking about environmental issues. In 2019, in the first edited collection of essays on the topic, Zachary Vernon notes that focusing attention on this bioregion might help “provide a way out of the limitations of thinking too locally or too globally,” and it might inspire a group of stakeholders to come to the table as well (7). One problem with ecocritical approaches is the long history of representing the U.S. South as an “internal other in the national imagination: colonized, subordinate, primitive, developmentally arrested, or even regressive” (Watson 254).

Unbound Spaces; The Limitless Possibilities of World-building