In his essay “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau proclaims, “…in wildness is the preservation of the world.”  As the world continues to urbanize, it’s as important as ever to identify the diverse ways that humans interact with wildness in cities and reflect on how these interactions inform our understanding of, relationship to, and impact on nature.  This special session seeks papers that consider encounters of wildness in urban landscapes as depicted in literature, film, photography, music, video games, and other cultural texts from all periods and regions.  Though abstract on all relevant topics are welcome, special consideration will be given to proposals that interrogate how urban encounters of wildness: