Literature and Taxonomy

Taxonomy is a fraught word in literary studies. As a regime of classification descended from the Euro-American scientific tradition, taxonomy encourages the organization of biological life on earth based on hard distinctions or similarities between groups. This practice appears to endorse essentialist and deterministic paradigms that scholars in literary and cultural studies typically eschew—and for good reason. Taxonomic modes of thinking are allied with racial, medical, and sexual ideologies that have fueled historical and contemporary efforts to police the categories of race, gender, ability, and desire.

Literary scholars today, especially in the environmental humanities and its related subfields, often conceive of the literary text as a space for critiquing and transgressing a taxonomical construction of the planetary community. Where taxonomy is restrictive and categorical, the literary text seems expansive and fluid. Fiction has proven fertile ground for parodies of biological classification, from Herman Melville’s celebrated “Cetology” chapter in Moby-Dick to H. G. Wells’ hybrid animals in The Island of Dr. Moreau. Creative non-fiction has been an equally rich site of critique, with texts like Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Undrowned exposing the limitations of taxonomic language.  

But despite the tensions between taxonomical science and literary studies, the fields also have their similarities and their intersections. Taxonomic patterns of thinking shape key analytics within literary studies, such as genre. Bibliographical networks have played a significant role in the establishment and dissemination of taxonomic models, through the publication and reception of expedition narratives, scientific periodicals, textbooks, and more. The study of taxonomy has provided the basis for concepts such as species, biodiversity, and community that have become central terms in ecocriticism, animal studies, multispecies studies, plant humanities, and more.

This panel seeks papers that probe the under-studied relationship between the science of taxonomy and literary studies and texts. Papers might explore (but are not limited to):

• Literary representations of taxonomic regimes or alternative/anti-taxonomic methods in the human and more-than-human world
• Redefinitions of biological species or community in animal studies, multispecies studies, new materialism, and related fields
• Theories of taxonomy from history of science or science studies perspectives
• Critiques of taxonomy from Black, Indigenous, queer, trans, or disability studies
• Bibliographical histories of taxonomic science and critique: books, magazines, textbooks, publishing networks

Please send an abstract of up to 300 words and a 100-word bio to Grace King, gmk5474@psu.edu, by March 23.