The Department of English and IQAC, Ramananda Centenary College, are pleased to announce the International Conference 'Margins of the Anthropocene: Waste, Bodies, and Decolonial Futures' to be held on 2–3 September 2026. The conference brings together scholars, artists, filmmakers, activists, and community practitioners to examine how ecological crises are experienced through waste, caste, labour, toxicity, disability, indigeneity, and more-than-human relations while imagining decolonial ecological futures.

The Anthropocene is often described as a planetary crisis, yet its burdens are profoundly unequal. Across the Global South, ecological degradation is lived through histories of colonialism, caste, extraction, waste colonialism, environmental injustice, and unequal exposure to toxicity. This conference proposes the margins as critical sites from which dominant narratives of environment, development, and modernity can be rethought. The conference explores the intersections of waste, bodies, materiality, justice, and decolonial thought through an interdisciplinary dialogue spanning environmental humanities, literary studies, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, geography, history, media studies, law, and the arts. It also foregrounds artistic and community practices as forms of ecological knowledge. The programme includes keynote lectures, panel discussions, a screening of the documentary 'Friends of Jilipibala' followed by a discussion with the filmmakers, and a proposed Community Art and Zine Fair featuring independent artists, particularly from Adivasi, Dalit, disabled, and other marginalized communities.

Call for Papers
Original and unpublished abstracts of 500 words are invited from scholars, researchers, artists, filmmakers, activists, and postgraduate students. Suggested Themes • Waste colonialism, plastic economies, and the Global South • Waste studies and discard cultures • Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi ecologies • Caste, labour, and environmental justice • Disability and environmental humanities • Postcolonial Anthropocene and decolonial futures • Material ecocriticism and new materialisms • Literature, cinema, and visual cultures of the Anthropocene • More-than-human worlds and multispecies relations • Climate migration, extraction, and ecological dispossession • Community knowledge, oral traditions, and environmental memory • Ecological ethics, care, and alternative futures Community Art and Zine Fair We invite Adivasi, Dalit, disabled, and other marginalized artists, writers, illustrators, and independent publishers to exhibit and, if they wish, sell zines, handmade books, artists' books, mixed-media artworks, photography, micro-poetry, comics, printmaking, recycled art, and other independent creative works.
Submission Guidelines
• Send your abstract (500 words) to <marginsofanthropocene@gmail.com> • Short bio: 100 words • Interdisciplinary submissions are encouraged. • Publication opportunity (subject to peer review). • Submission deadline: 20 August, 2026.