Panel Proposal for the NeMLA Convention, Newport, RI, March 6–9, 2027

Planetary crises—climate change, toxic pollution, biodiversity loss, and energy transition—are profoundly uneven in their distribution. Their material consequences are shaped by infrastructures of class, race, colonial histories, state power, and global capitalism. Increasingly, literary, artistic, and cultural texts across the world foreground these asymmetries, framing ecological crisis not only as environmental catastrophe but as a question of justice: Who breathes polluted air? Who profits from green transformation? Who consumes melting ice? Who bears the social and environmental costs of planetary change?

This panel invites contributions that explore how texts and cultural practices from diverse linguistic, geographic, and medial contexts engage with the unequal dimensions of ecological crisis. Moving beyond a single literary tradition, the panel seeks to foster a comparative and transnational conversation on environmental justice and planetary inequality.

We welcome papers addressing, among others:

• Environmental and climate justice across global contexts
• Toxicity, pollution, and slow violence
• Extractivism and postcolonial ecologies
• Infrastructures of energy, water, and air
• “Green” transition and its social costs
• Migration, borders, and climate displacement
• Rural transformation and environmental precarity
• Tourism, consumption, and the commodification of crisis
• Riverine, oceanic, and littoral ecologies
• Extinction, memory, and planetary archives
• Nonhuman agency and more-than-human ethics
• Intersections of ecology with race, gender, and class
• Indigenous, decolonial, and alternative ecological epistemologies
 

We encourage both close readings and theoretically informed approaches drawing on environmental humanities, political ecology, energy humanities, postcolonial studies, infrastructure studies, material ecocriticism, or related fields. Contributions may engage literature, film, visual art, performance, or other cultural forms.

The session will be held in-person but a few remote presentations may be included. Please clearly indicate in your submission whether you wish to participate in person or remotely.

All abstract submissions must be submitted through the NeMLA portal. Please note that the submission window for individual abstracts officially opens June 15 and closes September 30.