| CALL FOR PAPERS: Precarious Planet: Disability, Rights and Justice |
| Many contemporary societies have reached a crisis point in the wake of intensifying neoliberal extractive processes, the blurring of the democratic ethos, and the weakening of networks of social care and health care following the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, measures addressing the habitability of the planet and sustainability of its environment are increasingly founded in forms of privilege or acts of exceptionalism. The roots of many of these dilemmas are at least in part vested in the legacies of Empire and imperialism. While conditions of life in these times continue to be determined by the rhetoric of the state-capitalist nexus, the entire planet faces threats that are outcomes of extractive capitalism’s voracious appetites. We overlook at our peril that nature, as well as social goods — including housing, education, health care, accessible spaces, clean water, political rights and justice — are non-commodity categories, crucial to maintaining the habitability of life on planet earth. Thinking through the experience of the most vulnerable in this context is the remit of this conference. Forgetting, even effacing, the particular rights and entitlements of planetary life forms and life forces due to the powers of accumulation or commodification results in the creation of a ‘burnout society’ characterised by disabling conditions. Humans and other species, along with the environments that sustain them, are at risk of being considered disposable. The urgent need to address these issues of planetary precarity and survival have induced responses across all humanities and social science disciplines, and catalysed new and revised theories of social justice, inclusion, and human/environmental rights. As well as this general sense of the disabling, we aim to consider how the phenomena of climatic catastrophe (such as climate change and the recent pandemic) are differently experienced by populations on the basis of disability, race, gender and class. Nonetheless, we are mindful that disability also bespeaks differential forms of ability that suggest not only vulnerability but even at times empowerment. As David Mitchell and Sharyn Webb Snyder suggest, disability is impacted as an experience by neoliberalism as much as by physical and mental capacities and experience undergone by the subjects of disability themselves. Many scholars, including Amitav Ghosh, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Imre Szeman, and Achille Mbembe, ask us to our reconsider our relationship with the planet, to become more cognizant of the lurking threat of destruction or extinction that awaits us if we remain inactive. They advance the need to think more collectively, and to create modes of care and repair of what Wai Chee Dimock (2020) terms the “weak planet”, where the “baseline condition” of humans and other forms of life is vulnerability and susceptibility to harm. Dimock advocates human agency in initiating interactions and collaborations for resilience building, because “these precarious mediations release us from paralysis, sustaining hope in a future still unforeclosed, weakly but meaningfully open to our efforts” (12). However, while Martha Albertson Fineman (2021) likewise advocates the strengthening of social infrastructures as a turn towards cultures of care for vulnerable lives, Judith Butler (2016, 2020) and others argue that vulnerability can be a form of human/environmental resourcefulness, able to build resistance. Similarly, critical disability scholars point to the resourcefulness and capacities of disabled people in negotiating and reconfiguring built and social environments. As the era of the Anthropocene comes under new scrutiny, cultural critics like Ana Fraile-Marcos (2020) and Sarah Ahmed assess new paradigms of othering, resistance and resilience. Concepts like decolonial environmentalism and eco-materialism frame contemporary debates on climate change and planetary habitability; and precarity as “a theoretical concept of literary and cultural analysis” appears in “critical discourses on literary and visual texts in relation to their social conditions of production” (Wilson, Dwivedi, Gámez-Fernández 2020). The conference is being convened by Challenging Precarity: A Global Network (CPGN) and the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (SPACLALS). The organisers invite scholars and experts from disciplines in the humanities, especially in literary, visual and cultural studies, as well as those working in the social sciences, to examine multiple frameworks, methodological approaches, and critical lenses in contextualising the theme “Precarious Planet: Disability, Rights and Justice”, and to provide interventions into the pressing concerns of our present times and future lives. Papers considering the relation between the conference theme and the situation(s) of precarity in the Global South are strongly encouraged. Global and local indigenous Pacific, Aotearoa New Zealand, and First Nations Australian perspectives will be particularly considered. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to: human rights and global inequality the emancipatory politics of disability critical disability studies: private accounts vs public issues Pacific/First Nations/Indigenous knowledges as resistance to precarity vulnerability vs resilience reading, writing and imaging the environment affect/emotions, ecology and subjectivity environmental catastrophe and planetary crisis food and shelter security precaritisation of academia migration, refugees and xenophobia planetary ethics and aesthetics queer ecology: non-human queerness as planetary perspective citizenship, and cultural difference neoliberalism and (post)colonial precaritisation Pacific regionalism vs the ‘blue Pacific continent’ Oceanic studies and Pacific precarity pandemics: science vs ritual and folklore We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words together with a 50-word bionote. Proposed panels of 3-5 scholars from different university affiliations are also welcome. These should include a 300-word topic introduction together with each of the abstracts, underlining how these relate to each other and/or the panel topic. Timelines Submission of abstracts: 1 July 2023 Acceptance email: 18 August 2023 Contact Please submit abstracts and any queries to the conference organisers: Om Prakash Dwivedi, University of Bennett, India (CP): om.dwivedi@bennett.edu.in Michael Griffiths, University of Wollongong, Australia (SPACLALS): mickg@uow.edu.au Janet M. Wilson, University of Northampton, UK (CP): janet.wilson@northampton.ac.uk Keynote speakers Graham Akhurst, Australian Indigenous Studies, University of Technology, Sydney. Author of Borderland (2023), “This Country” (2022); Clutching the Void (2016) Lisa E Bloom, Gender and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Author of Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics: Artists Reimagine the Arctic and Antarctic (2022); Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions (1993) Elizabeth Humphrys, School of Communication, University of Technology, Sydney. Author of: “‘To prove I’m not incapable, I overcompensate’: Disability, ideal workers, the academy” (2022); “Ableism in higher education: the negation of crip temporalities within the neoliberal academy” (2022) Grace Moore, English and Linguistics Programme, University of Otago, New Zealand. Author of: Fire Stories (2022); Victorian Environments (2018). |
| 29th Congress of the International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures (FILLM) |
| The Federation Internationale des Langues et Littératures Modernes (FILLM), in collaboration with the School of Languages, University of Ghana, invites proposals for individual papers and roundtable panels for its 29th Congress, which is themed Languages, Literatures, and Cultures: Repositioning the Past, Innovating the Present, to be held from 23rd to 25th October 2023 at University of Ghana, Legon. The conference will address the following themes: – Local and global perspectives – Digital technologies and literature of the future – Language, literature, film – Human and environmental issues – Communicational ethics: Language, literature, translation – Education and internationalization – African languages and literature in international contexts – All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. The following paper categories are welcome: Panel Proposals: Panels should fall within the broad theme of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures: Repositioning the Past, Innovating the Present. Apart from that, it is up to the panel organizer(s) to decide on the format (roundtable, normal individual paper presentation, etc.). FILLM would like to encourage its member associations to propose panels that address their area of study, but within the broad area of the conference theme. Panels will be categorized into the following streams, for which individual proposals of abstracts may be submitted. Panels should have two co-conveners (panel organizers) from different institutions. At least one of the convenors should attend face-to-face, and have a PhD degree. Delegates’ participation is limited to one panel per person. However, panelists may also convene one plenary session, roundtable or be a discussant in another panel/plenary session/ roundtable. Networks (AHP) (ASAA) (GHANA STUDIES) etc., panels should be submitted by respective network conveners. The network name must be appended to the title of the proposed panel in square brackets. Panel submissions from individuals from Africa or the African diaspora are specifically encouraged. Each panel (proposal) should appoint one main organizer/convener/chair who will be responsible for compiling the submitted proposals/abstracts and communication with the congress organizers. Panel proposals should include the following: Title for the panel A 300-word abstract describing the topic A brief description of the format (e.g., roundtable) Title and brief descriptions of each panel participants’ contribution (150 words) Contact and affiliation details for the main panel organizer Contact and affiliation details for each of the panel participants Panel proposals should be submitted on EasyAbs at http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/29FillmCongress Paper Submission Individual papers must address the theme of the congress. Before you propose a paper or roundtable contribution, please read the theme of the congress, the information below, and then browse the list of panels. Please note that an individual must not make more than one single-authored paper proposal or roundtable contribution (although they may also convene one panel/roundtable; or be a discussant or chair in one panel). Submissions for individual papers should include the following: Full name of author(s) Professional affiliation and address Title of the proposed paper Abstract of not more than 250 words Name of the sub-theme to which the paper is intended as a contribution Individual abstracts should be submitted on EasyAbs at http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/29FillmCongress Deadline for all submission: March 31st , 2023 Please send all queries to fillmcongress29@ug.edu.gh. Call for article proposals: Placing Ghanaian and Native American/First Nation Literatures in Conversation. A special issue of the European Journal of American Studies to be published as Issue 1, 2025, as well as an online conference, invites proposals for articles of circa 7,000-8,000 words on comparative readings of Ghanaian and Indigenous North American texts, to appear in a special issue of the European Journal of American Studies in 2025. Issue editors: Helen Yitah (University of Ghana) and James Mackay (European University Cyprus) Deadline for proposals: March 6th, 2023. We are happy to engage in correspondence about this project via our emails: Helen Yitah at hyitah@ug.edu.gh, and James Mackay at J.Mackay@euc.ac.cy. Please follow this link to access the full Call for Article proposals. |
| CALL FOR PAPERS: Imagining Environmental Justice in a Postcolonial World |
| EACLALS Triennial Conference 2023: 6-10 June 2023, Sorbonne Nouvelle University For the 2023 conference of EACLALS (European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies), we invite delegates to: · Bring postcolonial literatures and arts into conversation with environmentalism; · Investigate the power of narratives in all literary genres, as well as images and artistic performances, to evoke environmental injustice; and · Explore the breadth of what environmental justice may mean in postcolonial contexts. We invite contributions for 20-minute papers or 90-minute panels addressing the conference topic. Please send a 300-word abstract for individual papers or 450-word abstract for panels, accompanied by a short biographical note on all speakers (100-150 words) and 5-6 keywords to EACLALS2023@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr by 15 October 2022. Confirmed keynote speakers: Amanda Boetzkes (University of Guelph, Canada) Elizabeth DeLoughrey (University of California, Los Angeles, US) Graham Huggan (University of Leeds, UK) Imre Szeman (University of Waterloo, Canada) The global ecological and climate crisis is strongly linked to modernity and its history of imperialism, colonisation, capitalism, and exploitation of resources. Postcolonial literatures foreground these connections: key texts include Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist (1974), Judith Wright’s “For a Pastoral Family” (1985), Patricia Grace’s Potiki (1986), Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water (1999), Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005), Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006), Helon Habila’s Oil on Water (2011), Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s “Tell Them” (2012), Uzma Aslam Khan’s Thinner than Skin (2012), and Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were (2021). These powerful stories reveal the colonial origins of ecological devastation and its dramatic consequences for the Global South. These texts have also prompted new theoretical concepts such as the “slow violence” of delayed destruction (Nixon 2013) and the “plantationocene” (Haraway 2015). After a turn to ecocriticism developed in the anglophone world in the 1980s, with influential voices coming out of the Americas, a fruitful dialogue in the mid-2000s between the fields of postcolonialism and environmentalism (Huggan 2004, Nixon 2005) gave rise to postcolonial ecocriticism and its distinctive approach to environmental questions. Postcolonial ecocriticism tends to focus on social ecology and its tensions, and considers nature in the contexts of human uses, built environments and degraded landscapes. Postcolonial ecocriticism sheds light on the links between colonisation and contemporary social, economic, and environmental issues. It pays heed to ways in which human exploitation transforms ecosystems, limits access to natural resources, and generates pollution and other hazards. It is wary of nostalgia for a pure landscape standing outside history, and conscious of the difficulty of representing the nonhuman environment (Cilano and DeLoughrey 2007). To make these links between colonisation and environmental issues, postcolonial ecocriticism redirects customary postcolonial questionings by triangulating them with the relations between the human and the nonhuman. In doing so, it often favours a materialist approach, attempting to make sense of environmental issues by drawing on climate science, environmental law, geography, and other sciences, which it sometimes challenges. It is also aware of the local specificities of ecological issues linked to colonial history, while acknowledging their global context. As awareness spreads of the need to share the earth’s resources sustainably and fairly, shifting perceptions of the environment are changing people’s sense of responsibility and accountability, individual and collective. In this context, postcolonial ecocriticism reflects on better ways of inhabiting the world and promoting environmental justice. In one of its best-known early formulations, environmental justice was what grassroots activists in the United States in the 1980s demanded in answer to the environmental injustice and racism that forces disadvantaged, vulnerable, racialised populations to bear the brunt of environmental degradation and pollution (Holifield, Chakraborty and Walker, 2018). Use of the notion of environmental justice then spread beyond the United States, in particular through the action of Indigenous peoples and the development of ideas related to social ecology, such as the “environmentalism of the poor” (Martínez-Alier 2002), social justice, and climate justice. Topics and approaches can include, but are not limited to: – eco-injustice and race / ethnicity – eco-injustice and indigeneity – eco-injustice and poverty / marginality – environmental justice discourse and literary genre – the language of environmental justice discourse – the rhetoric of “toxic discourse” / “toxic politics” – environmental justice, monolingualism, and translation issues – environmental justice in relation to local and global contexts – environmental justice in comparative context – environmental justice and: aesthetics affect artistic activism (“arctivism”) capitalism climate justice conservation / discourses of purity / “postcolonial pastoral” decoloniality ecofeminism human rights interdisciplinarity intersectionality materialist approaches multispecies justice nature protection neocolonialism / “toxic imperialism” pedagogy petrocultures science the nonhuman the writer activist tourism transnationalism Scientific committee: Aline Bergé (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Kathie Birat (U. of Lorraine), Jaine Chemmachery (Sorbonne U.), Cédric Courtois (U. of Lille), Xavier Garnier (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Fiona McCann (U. of Lille), Marie Mianowski (U. Grenoble Alpes), Claire Omhovère (U. Paul Valéry – Montpellier), Alexandra Poulain (Sorbonne Nouvelle), and Kerry-Jane Wallart (U. of Orléans). For more information, please contact Christine Lorre-Johnston (Sorbonne Nouvelle, convener) at: EACLALS2023@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr or, Visit the conference webpage using http://www.univ-paris3.fr/eaclals-2023-imagining-environmental-justice-in-a-postcolonial-world-746756.kjsp?RH=ACCUEIL |
| The Ruptures Commons |
Article submissions are invited for consideration for one of two collections of essays on the theme of The Ruptured Commons. Revised and expanded papers from the ACLALS triennial conference on the theme are welcome, as are papers written independently of the conference that engage with postcolonial/world, Canadian, or Indigenous literatures. Essays submitted by 31 December 2022 will be considered for one of two publications: (1) a scholarly book entitled Ruptured Commons to be edited by Anna Guttman and Veronica Austen and proposed for publication by Benjamins as part of the International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures (FILLM) Studies in Languages and Literatures Series; essays for this book should be on postcolonial/world literature or culture and be written in English. (2) a special issue of Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature canadienne to be co-edited by John Clement Ball and Asma Sayed; essays should be on literatures of Canada/Turtle Island from any period and may be written in English or French. Both publications are expected to be in print by 2024. At a time when we have all been experiencing profound and unexpected disruptions to our shared spaces, routines, economies, societies, and work-lives, these publications will consider the nature and implications of rupture, the commons, and their conjoining: the ruptured commons. And while a disruptive disease has been at the forefront through the pandemic, imperialism and colonialism historically were, and in many places remain, forms of severe rupture – to lifeways, cultures, and forms of inhabitation, community, and governance. Capitalism is inherently disruptive, and disruptive technologies (from the printing press to social media, the steam engine to the drone) transform lives and present their own opportunities and threats. Rupture is increasingly becoming a modus operandi among political actors, whether they seek to exploit and accentuate divisions, or, in the case of anti-colonial movements and Black Lives Matter protests, to contest hierarchies, privileges, and prejudices embedded in social attitudes and institutional practice. The increasingly frequent eruptions of such moments raise important questions about social consensus around common realities and common truths. The ruptured commons is at the heart of the concept of the Anthropocene and what Amitav Ghosh has called “the great derangement” of our unsustainable ways. The pandemic, with its multiple and far-reaching disruptions, has forced us to rethink our common spaces and how we use them, from city streets to airplanes, domestic spaces to workplaces – including academic ones. So much of our shared future is uncertain. As an attempt to reimagine the commons, we invite contributors to place notions of rupture and commons in a wide variety of pan-historical contexts and scales from the local to the global. Approaches and topics within literary and cultural studies could include but are not limited to: · Archives and the institutional praxis of collecting, documenting, and remembering the past · Borders and boundaries: disrupted, shored up; transgressed, (re-)imposed · Disruptive histories and aftermaths of imperialism and colonialism, including trans-Atlantic slavery and the legacies of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism · Ecological and ecocritical approaches to the literary and cultural representation of the commons and of its inhabitants, non-human and human · Finding commonalities, understanding differences · Healing ruptures and reconciliation · Inclusive vs. exclusive models of the commons: access, control, ownership · Indigenous knowledges and perspectives: on ruptured places and times; on the commons · Literature and contagion, health, medicine, and/or dis-ease · Literature and disaster: natural or otherwise · Literature of protest and activism: disrupting the present to transform the future · Mending and reclaiming the commons · New perspectives on risk and the risk society · Queer, Indigenous, and Afro- Futurities · Reparative work and feminist ethics of care toward alternate futures · Representation and inhabitation of common spaces · Resource extraction and the ruptured commons · Rupture as a mode of literary representation · Ruptures of community, culture, economy, family, language or identity · Rupturing heteropatriarchal, settler colonial, and racist spaces · Spaces and places in times of rupture: private and public, physical and virtual; urban, rural and wild · Technology and/as rupture Those interested should indicate their intent to contribute by 1 August 2022 by sending a brief email to rupturedcommons@gmail.com If space allows, additional papers may be considered after Aug. 1. Please email to enquire. Finished papers are due 31 December 2022 and should be between 6000 and 8000 words. Submissions should be sent electronically via Word attachment to rupturedcommons@gmail.com For details about SCL/ÉLC, visit the journal’s website at https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/SCL or contact one of the co-editors: John Clement Ball, University of New Brunswick, jball@unb.ca, or Asma Sayed, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, asma.sayed@kpu.ca. For more information about the FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures, visit the series website at http://www.fillm.org/publications/bookseries.html or contact one of the co-editors: Anna Guttman, Lakehead University, aguttman@lakeheadu.ca, or Veronica Austen, St. Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo, vjausten@uwaterloo.ca. |