Call for Abstracts: “Cultures of Waste” International conference (Offline)

Deadline for abstract submissions: Dec 20, 2025

Full name / name of organization: Department of Liberal Arts. Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India and UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies, Department of English, The University of Hyderabad

Contact email: culturesofwaste@gmail.com

Conference coordinators: Pramod K Nayar (Distinguished Professor, Dept of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad and UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies, Department of English, The University of Hyderabad) and Srirupa Chatterjee (Associate Professor, Dept of Liberal Arts, IITH)

Keynote Speakers: a) Myra J. Hird, Professor in the School of Environmental Studies at Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada b) Cecilia Åsberg, Professor of Gender, Nature, and Culture at Linköping University, Sweden

 Conference dates and venue: Aug 7-9, 2026; Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India

Concept Note: When Myra Hird develops a 'public sociology of waste' in her book of the same title, she talks in terms of 'framing' waste. This Conference addresses modes of framing waste and the cultures in which waste is framed: as a problem, as a resource, and so on. It examines imaginaries of wasted bodies, landscapes, processes that construct waste as monstrosities, redundancies, excesses. Focusing on literary texts from the high literary to the popular, the speculative and the 'new weird', the Conference seeks papers on waste/d bodies, the nonhuman as/in waste, hybrids-as-waste, the waste Anthropocene among others.

Scholars and writers with various intellectual engagements including contemporary Gothic studies (like Catherine Spooner and Fred Botting), critical body studies (like Susan Bordo, Esther Rothblum, and Marilyn Wann), energy humanities (like Imre Szeman and Tanner Mirrlees), posthumanism (like Rosi Baridotti, Donna Haraway, and Karen Barad), and last but not least gender and queer studies (like Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Sara Ahmed) have recursively addressed how waste and excess define the tech-driven consumerist world we inhabit. How do cultures of waste and excess define the current human condition? How do we imagine environmental crises and energy shortages within intellectual debates of waste? What genres in, say, the literary, enable a critical literacy of/around waste? How are human and non-human identities impacted by excesses and redundancy resulting from a highly commercialized, technologized, and transnational culture which characterizes the present times?  How do we approach wasted and wasting bodies, or wasted – and therefore disposable – peoples of modernity?

“Cultures of Waste” will be an attempt to delve into some of these critical questions and more.

The conference seeks to address matters of waste and excess through topics that include but are not limited to:

• Environmental degradation and waste
• Embodiment, decay, and waste
• Gendered identity as waste and excess
• Gothic narratives and the concept of waste
• Body image, body shaming, and excess
• Energy crisis and cultures of waste
• Posthumanism, waste, and excess
• Climate crisis and waste
• Anthropocene, ecological crises, and waste

Please note:

• Abstracts of 300 to 350 words (for a 20-minute presentation) together with a short biographical note (no more than 75 words) are invited from both academic professionals and younger scholars.
• Please stick to the prescribed word limit while drafting the abstract (citations and bibliographies are not needed with the abstract).
• Please mention your name, designation, and email address in the abstract
• Deadline for abstract submission is Dec 20, 2025. Submissions after the deadline will not be accepted.
• Abstracts must be sent to conference organizers only to the following email id culturesofwaste@gmail.com
• Details of date of registration, registration fee, travel, and accommodation will be conveyed to participants after their abstracts are shortlisted.
• Only participants whose abstracts are shortlisted will be informed over the email by Jan 31, 2026. No communication will be sent to applicants whose proposals are not shortlisted.
• There is no travel support associated with this conference.
• Accommodation and food will be provided; charges for this will be included in the registration fee.
• For any queries, please write to the conference organizers at culturesofwaste@gmail.com.