School of Humanities and Performing Arts

Department of English and Cultural Studies

Central Campus

CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Bangalore

Organizes

Mélange

An MA in English with Communication Studies Initiative

&

A Student Led - Postgraduate International Conference on

Archives of the Anthropocene: Writing Contemporary Humanities

Date: February 27, 2026

We live in a borrowed world. One that never belonged to us, one we owe our future generations to.

At a politico-historical juncture when human beings have been proved to be the foremost force of ecological change it becomes critical to re-evaluate the relationship that humans have forged with non-human agents within what is considered to be the natural world. The concept of the Anthropocene emerged to comprehend these changes and in the process presents a methodological approach to look at our planet as a body of inscriptions which can be read as an archive of our ecological past, present and possible futures. . If the folds of the Aravallis stand as a geological record of Earth’s formative epoch, literatures of antiquity around world civilizations have recorded cultural existence in their ecological specificities. These documents are as much a record of human ingenuity in acting on nature for survival as well as of extraction which now increasingly threatens the very survival of the planet and its inhabitants both human and non-human. Such a relationship has repeatedly been etched in memory through narratives preserved in material geographical traces, institutional documented archives, cultural folklore, ritualistic embodied practices, literary records and archives of experience. These diverse forms reflect how people across cultures have sheltered themselves within, adapted to, and resisted the natural forces. The human memory is one of the most intimate archives of the Anthropocene, in which nature is rendered inseparable from humanity by being encoded in collective memory.

This conference attempts to trace and forge a way forward to understanding how ecology is now an active site of activism, resistance, and governance interventions. At one end are the climate change deniers and on the other are passionate activists who want to establish ecology as the central concern of political, social, and cultural action. The literary and the cultural modes of expressions becomes an active mode of intervention in this debate to mobilize cognitive, affective, and cultural subjectivities to arrive at a realization that climate isn’t an abstract and distant concept, but is deeply personal and intimate. Literary works from the Global South have increasingly taken up the challenge of writing contemporary literature to register the intersectionality of ecology and memory. Similarly, indigenous voices from around the world especially from settler colonial experiences through their folklore and living practices preserved over millenia are now putting forward an alternative to co-exist with our ecological settings. These alternatives which pre-date contemporary forms of economic and social order also provide newer grounds of solidarity and contentions. Contemporary humanities, which is now taking shape because of this amalgamation, is at a vantage point to put forward a redefinition of writing the ecological archives where folklore, land and literature are intertwined.

The conference is profoundly aware that climate and ecological changes are not experienced equally. It will explore the ontological complexities that emerge as a consequence of ecology and how this leads to a fundamental restructuring of being and meaning. By interrogating these shifts, we seek to identify and articulate new genres of survival and resistance through ecological narratives and storytelling.

This conference will also accommodate the idea that ‘home’ is complicated by the climate crisis, leading to ‘climate refugees’ and the theme of vanishing homes due to floods, fires, and rising sea levels. We aim to include narratives of displacement and loss where the idea of home is conceptualized not as property, but as deeply reciprocal relationships with nature and community. This collective endeavor aims not just to document the disruption but to foster a realization of profound interdependence, mobilizing a humanistic response equal to the immense ecological challenge we face.

The subtopics for the conference can be, but are not limited to, the following:

-       Vanishing Homes and Climate Displacement

-       Oralities & Folklore as Ecological Memory

-       Revisiting Contemporary Humanities and the Archive

-       Archives of Survival: Storytelling as Ecological Praxis

-       Extractivist Fiction

-       Nonhuman Archives

-       Decolonizing the Archive

-       Affective Ecologies

-       Climate, Labor and Precarity of Survival

-       Gendered or Queer Ecologies

-       Caste & the Politics of Displacement

-       Digital Activism & Climate Memory

-       Media and documenting ecological shifts

-       Cinema and the Anthropocene.

We invite UG and PG students, scholars, academics, and practitioners to share their work in the conference. Please submit your abstract at melange@conference.christuniversity.in by January 09, 2026.

Important Dates:

Last date of abstract Submission: January 09, 2026

Notification of acceptance: January 12, 2026

Last date of paying registration fee: January 31, 2026

Registration Fee: Rs. 1200 (+GST) (External)

Please note this is an in-person only conference. The organizers will be unable to provide accommodation or travel. These must be arranged by the participants.

Selected papers will be published in the Peter Lang Book Series CUECS Series on Interdisciplinary Humanities in the 21st Century.