Call for Proposals
Beyond Boundaries: Visions of Ecological Futures
2025 PNCA Symposium
October 2–4, 2025
Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) at Willamette University
511 NW Broadway, Portland, Oregon

We invite submissions for individual papers for the 2025 PNCA Symposium, Beyond Boundaries: Visions of Ecological Futures, a three-day convening of critical and creative voices engaging ecological thought across disciplines and communities. This symposium explores the intersections of environment, art, activism, pedagogy, and identity—with a focus on how ecological futures are imagined, embodied, and enacted through diverse cultural practices and positionalities.

All events are free and open to the public.

About the Theme

Ecological thinking foregrounds the interdependence of all life—human and non-human, material and affective, theoretical and grounded. Beyond Boundaries seeks to foster dialogue around ecology as a generative framework for creating just, embodied, and intersectional futures.

How might we challenge dominant understandings of "Nature"? In what ways do relationships—with environments, bodies, technologies, and communities—inform our ecological imaginations?

This year’s symposium encourages participants to reflect on how ecological entanglements shape and are shaped by lived experience, artistic practice, and political struggle. We are especially interested in work rooted in feminist, queer, trans, Indigenous, Black, and disabled approaches to ecological thought (Alaimo 2010; Tsing 2015; Haraway 2003; Wynter 2003; Clare 2017; Bey 2022).

The 2025 symposium will feature a keynote lecture by Stacy Alaimo from the University of Oregon and an additional speaker TBA.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Expansive frameworks for understanding ecology

• Ecofeminism and feminist science studies

• Indigenous ecological knowledge and Two-Spirit worldviews

• Disability justice, eco-crip theory, and environmental health

• Environmental storytelling, speculative fiction, and climate narratives

• Technological mediation and visions of ecological futures

• Interspecies relationships and non-human kinship

• Intersectional pedagogy and approaches to ecological education

• Non-extractive relationships to land and nature

• Art and performance as forms of ecological critique

We welcome contributions from independent artists, cultural workers, researchers, senior undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and practitioners located in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Presentation Format

We invite individual academic paper presentations in the following format:

• Individual Papers (15–20 minutes): Academic presentations based on research, creative practice, or community work accompanied by a slide deck presentation. Papers will be grouped into thematic panels by the organizers. Each panel session, lasting two hours, will feature four individual papers with approximately 25 minutes for audience and mediator questions following the presentations.

• Proposals must be submitted via email to the PNCA Symposium email, pncasymposium-group@willamette.edu, no later than 12:00 AM PST on August 1st, 2025. 

Proposal Guidelines

• Abstract: 300 words max

• Bio: 100 words max

• Tech/Accessibility Needs: Please include specific requirements (e.g., projectors, sound equipment, accessibility accommodations)

• Language: Submissions must be in English

• Submission Email: pncasymposium-group@willamette.edu

• Submission Deadline: August 1st, 2025

• Notification of Acceptance: August 15th, 2025

Symposium Format

The symposium will feature keynote lectures, panel discussions, exhibitions, workshops, performances, and participatory events. We are committed to fostering an inclusive, accessible, and collaborative environment for all participants and attendees.

Please direct any questions to the Symposium Coordinators, Lauren Hough (she/her) and lowen hatano (she/they), via email: pncasymposium-group@willamette.edu.