The last decade has seen a surge in scholarly interdisciplinarity, exploring the nonhuman in a broad range of critical perspectives. Whether through Glenworth et al (2024)’s conservationist prism which contextualises ‘Rewilding’ as a way of restoring ‘non-human autonomy’; or perhaps, through Bram Büscher (2021)’s capitalist reflections on nature’s alienation and entanglement, both of which are recent approaches that seek to champion the cause of ‘decentering the human in favor of a concern for the nonhuman’ (Grusin, 2015: 1), we see a growing pace of intersectionality within which nature and literature are brazenly intertwined. Often suggested as a repressed generation of ecological beings, either of subaltern considerations or anthropomorphic (de)constructions, the nonhuman, whether it be plants, animals, or ecosystems, has continued to fit the bill for a contemporary kind of critical and textual narrative that urgently needs to undergo transformation through a process of generation, regeneration or autogeneration, after decades of being consistently synonymous with the image of depletive degeneration which David Abram (1996:22-23) sharply condemns as a biosphere of ‘nonregenerative’ decline, which in his views, has resulted in a variation of problems for humans: epidemics (including immune diseases and cancers) or perhaps, pandemics like the 2019 COVID which postdates Abram’s study; or mental disorders. In the face of today’s climate change and biodiversity loss, this session proposes a constructive way of exploring literature’s capacity to both reflect (on) the devastation of the natural world and, more importantly, provide imaginative models for its regeneration. Drawing on ecocritical theory, environmental humanities, posthumanism, and new materialism, this session invites papers that trace how literary texts can challenge anthropocentric templates, (re)framing a textual world in which the nonhuman is seen as an active element with agency, forging a reciprocal connection with the human world.

Papers can engage with, but are not limited to, the following themes:

1. Ecocriticism (this includes a combination of ecocritical theories with other theories with the use of the prefix 'eco', e.g., ecofeminism, ecophenomenology, ecopoetique, ecoqueer, etc)

2. Environmental Humanities 

3. Geocriticism

4. Green Negritude Studies

5. Green Cultural Studies

6. Deep Ecology

7. Dark Ecology

8. Collapsology/Spiralism

9. Speciesism 

This session proposes an ‘auto-presentation’ format only, where presenters are expected to prepare, in advance, a 10 to 15-minute pre-recorded video and/or audio version of their papers; and then play these to their audience at the conference, followed by a live Q&A session. The creative and innovative part of this session lies in the deviation from live oral presentation of papers by presenters, laying emphasis on the use of pre-recorded materials (videos/audios) in combination with powerpoint slides while the presenter will be on standby to answer questions at the end of their automatic presentation. This format is therefore Q&A-focussed, as this will help to increase the number of questions asked to presenters at conferences. This innovation will also help young and first-time conference panellists (particularly (post)graduate students) to build confidence in oral presentations rather than shying away altogether from paper presentations at conferences.

Abstracts and presentations are accepted only in English please. (Including language of pre-recorded materials).