Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies

Vol. 51 No. 2 | September 2025

Call for Papers

Environmental Health Humanities:

Microbes, Plagues, and Healing

Guest Editors

Pin-chia Feng (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)

Robin Chen-Hsing Tsai (Tamkang University)

Deadline for Submissions: December 31, 2024

In 2015, the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Report introduced “Planetary Health,” highlighting the profound impact of environmental changes, including climate change, on global well-being, food security, and the proliferation of diseases caused by various microorganisms. Fast forward to 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, emerged, underscoring the interconnectedness of human health and the environment. Works such as Samuel Myers and Howard Frumkin’s Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves, Richard Horton and Selina Lo’s “Planetary Health: A New Science for Exceptional Action,” and Pierre Horwitz and Margot W. Parkes’s “Intertwined Strands for Ecology in Planetary Health” offer comprehensive frameworks melding environmental concerns with health, politics, and well-being. Schrödinger’s definition of life is systemic, and his envisioning of a life in interaction with “its environment” seems congruent with Georges Canguilhem’s conception of “life” and other philosophers such as René Dubos, Claude Bernard, and Bernard Stiegler. From these critical trajectories we hope to redefine the possibility of future medical and environmental humanities research.

While we are still struggling to grapple with the ongoing repercussions of COVID-19, society increasingly recognizes the importance of biomedical advancements and medical technologies. Addressing the psychological impacts of infectious diseases, the anguish of separation, and related healthcare challenges is paramount. Consequently, discussions surrounding environmental health humanities research and practice have gained unprecedented significance.

For this special issue of Concentric, entitled “Environmental Health Humanities: Microbes, Plagues, and Healing,” we aim to delve into the imaginaries of diseases and viruses, as well as revisit discussions on healing within literature and culture. We invite submissions that are devoted to the interactions with nature and wildlife, food system, and changes in demography and technology. Additionally, the issue hopes to scrutinize the environmental and societal factors contributing to medical and environmental racism, alongside the erosion of social structures due to industrial technologies. We welcome analyses of mindful approaches such as dietary practices, gardening therapy, and activism, which can present alternative paths to healing within modern medicine. Furthermore, we encourage investigations into the spiritual dimensions as pivotal components of human and environmental health that may catalyze change in the Anthropocene era.

Environmental health humanities, as an interdisciplinary field, offer a platform to tackle complex issues at the intersection of medicine, humanities, ethics, and beyond, thereby fostering critical inquiry and dialogue. Contributions examining various facets of this overarching theme are warmly welcomed. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

(1)    Medical humanities and the Anthropocene

(2)    Through the lens of pandemic

(3)    Narrative of outbreaks

(4)    Plague and pandemic writing

(5)    Contagion and contagious disease

(6)    Quarantine, security, society of control

(7)    Health, disease, and poverty

(8)    Graphic medicine and its discontents

(9)    Plagues, ageing, and gerontology

(10)  The normal and the pathological

(11)  Odors, smells, and health

(12)  Biopolitics, necropolitics, and immunopolitics

(13)  Resonances and entanglements

(14)  Immunity, community, and state of exception

(15)  The posthuman and the medical imagination

(16)  Mindfulness and spirituality

Please send complete papers of 6,000-10,000 words, 5–8 keywords, and a brief biography to concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw by December 31, 2024. Manuscripts should follow the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Except for footnotes, which should be single-spaced, manuscripts must be double-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman. Please consult our style guide at http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw.

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Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, indexed in Arts and Humanities Citation Index, is a peer-reviewed journal published two times per year by the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. Concentric is devoted to offering innovative perspectives on literary and cultural issues and advancing the transcultural exchange of ideas. While committed to bringing Asian-based scholarship to the world academic community, Concentric welcomes original contributions from diverse national and cultural backgrounds. In each issue of Concentric we publish groups of essays on a special topic as well as papers on more general issues. http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw/.

For submissions or general inquiries, please contact us at: concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw.