The 1st Conference on Posthumanism and the Ecological Crisis organized by the Department of English & Literary Studies, Brainware University will be held on January 29, 2022. The objective is to motivate and assist esteemed faculty members, research scholars, and students from various institutions in sharing their work through presentations and publication of their state-of-the-art research.

It would seem that the entity known as 'the human' and its many attendant humanisms have suffered blows to its narcissistic epistemological self-centering for centuries now. A hundred years ago, Freud in his 1915-1917 lectures titled Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis pointed out how Copernicus in the 16th century struck the first blow at humanity's self-love by claiming that the earth was not in fact at the center of the universe but one of many planets that revolved around the sun. Darwin was the deliverer of the next blow in the 19th century since he robbed man's status as the species created specially by God whereas Freud considered himself the progenitor of the third humiliation as he demonstrated that the ego was not even the master in its own house. A strong anti-humanist tradition may be traced in mid-twentieth century philosophical thought as well, with Heidegger's criticism of Sartre's humanist existentialism in his Letter on Humanism, and Derrida's subsequent dismantling of the 'Human Sciences' in 'Structure, Sign and Play' which many take to be the inaugural moment of post structuralism. In the closing decades of the twentieth century and the opening decades of the twenty first, the acknowledgement of the climate emergency by international bodies and the growing consensus among climate scientists regarding human complicity in the same has lent an ecological accent to the many posthumanisms ascendant in the academy today. The link between human history and natural history - a link extensively probed in the various Hegelian and Marxist traditions of inquiry - has acquired a new weight today with the proposal of the era of the Anthropocene by Krutzen in 2000: a classification of geological time which sees human activity post the Industrial Revolution as a geological force shaping the planet. The link between a possible human future and the future of the planet however, has become tenuous - it is easier to imagine an apocalyptic future devoid of any humans than it is to conceive one where humanity manages to survive the climate crisis.

Whether it be Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak's 'planetarity', Timothy Morton's 'ecology without nature', Dipesh Chakrabarty's four theses on the climate of history or Quentin Meillassoux's speculative materialist idea of the 'great outdoors' - the relation of 'the human' with 'nature', 'history' or 'the thing-in-itself' is being rethought with an urgency not previously felt.

Proposals are invited for papers pertaining to (but not limited to) the following themes:

• Capitalism and the Anthropocene
• Posthumanism and Planetarity
• The Industrial Revolution and Climate Change
• Literature and Posthumanism
• Literature and Planetarity
• Literature and the Capitalocene
• Sci-Fi and Posthumanism
• New Media and the Climate Crisis
• Literature and the Ecological Crisis
• Migration and Climate Change
• The Literature of Objects

Specifics & Timeline:

• Full paper (2000-3000 words) along with an abstract (250-300 words) need to be submitted to the following: dkm.hu@brainwareuniversity.ac.in
• Paper and abstract need to be formatted as per the MLA 8th edition.
• Font Name: Times New Roman, Font Size: 12 for Body, 14 (Bold) for Header, Line Spacing: 2.0, Alignment: Justified
• Last date for submission of full paper and abstract: January 17, 2022
• Notification of acceptance: January 20, 2022
• Last date for registration for paper presentation: January 24, 2022

• Date of the conference (Online Mode through Google Meet): January 29, 2022

Registration Fee:

Indian Presenters: 500 INR
For Participants Only: 200 INR
International Presenters: 15 USD

Details of Payment:

Bank Name: ICICI Bank
Account Holder’s Name: Brainware University
Account No. : 082401002764
Account Type: Savings
IFS Code: ICIC0000824
Branch Name: Barasat

Registration Link: https://forms.gle/bSZQs1hDWHZfb6187

For any queries please contact:

Shrestha Chatterjee: +91-9051821504; shc.hu@brainwareuniversity.ac.in

Dibyokamal Mitra: +91-9836056003; dkm.hu@brainwareuniversity.ac.in