War Literature Today: Ecology, Violence, and the Novel

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787). This special issue belongs to the section "Literature in the Humanities".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027 | Viewed by 69

 E-Mail Website
Guest Editor Department of English, State University of New York Albany, Albany, NY 12222, USA
Interests: contemporary questions of race and whiteness; enlightenment literature; ecological re-conceptions of human identitySpecial Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In research on the novel, it is well-established that the genre’s origins, specifically its realist origins, date concurrently with the British Enlightenment. During this period, feudal forms of prose fiction gave way to the novel, which is more traditionally conceived as being focused on experiences generally available to the ordinary person. Concurrently,  the scientific method, the move from primogeniture and mercantilism to early modern capitalism, the invention of modern subjectivity, and, not least, the emergence of the public sphere or civil society, were enabled by the novel.

Less discussed in the novel’s history is the association between modern civility—the public use of private reason, sociability, intersubjective consensus, and the notion of private sphere norms—and the emergence of the individual conceptualized as a civilian.  For Hobbes, this meant the surrender of recourse to political violence in a commonwealth, and its monopolization by the state alone as projected against external enemies.  For Kant, the process of civilianization of the populace is underwritten by the legal command “Argue but obey.”  To the extent that the early-modern novel offers a zone of shared subjectivity in the civil-society sense, as Habermas argues, civilianization is inseparable from the novel’s history.

But what about novels today? What about prose fiction under the conditions of de-civilianization? How does the genre of the novel change, if in fact it does, from being focused primarily on ordinary personal relationships tempered by Enlightenment social protocols to prose fiction where the civilian, wittingly or unwittingly, disappears?  How does realism mutate in prose fiction when Schmitt’s “state of exception” for the liberal state’s recourse to naming its enemies outside the polis is also turned inward? What happens to the novel when “the state of exception,” recalling Agamben’s phrase, becomes the norm? Moreover, what happens when merely human-based notions of civility and political violence are displaced by non-human agents, as, for example, not only in climate change-inspired violence, as in mass exodus and resource wars, but also when ecological relationships themselves get deadly?

This Special Issue of Humanities calls for essays (5–8k words) addressing political violence in the novel in both its human and posthuman manifestations. While not meant to limit submissions in scope, special consideration will be given to essays focusing on mutations of the realist novel, war in ecological fiction, and climate change fiction (or “Clifi”).

Prof. Dr. Mike Hill
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

• contemporary war
• ecological violence
• realism
• genre
• novel
• public sphere
• civil society
• climate change
• climate disaster
• Anthropocene

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

• Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
• Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
• Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
• External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
• Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.