Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies Vol. 43 No. 1 | March 2017
Call for Papers
The City and the Anthropocene
Guest editors
Serena Chou (Academia Sinica, Taiwan) & Simon Estok (Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea)
The “Anthropocene†is an increasingly popular term describing what Diane Ackerman calls “the Human Age,†namely the period visible in a measurable and clearly anthropogenic carbon stratum developing in the Industrial Revolution. Regularly represented in opposition to more bucolic images, the city has often represented the worst excesses of human habitation of the natural environment, just as it has been seen as a symbol of the “human age,†and the epitome of waste and spoilage. However, we know from megacities of the twenty-first century that cities are more carbon efficient than less vertical assemblages such as villages and farms. Recent research on “sustainability and the city†observes that “the average urban dweller in the U.S. has about one-third the carbon footprint of the average suburban dweller†and that “from a climate change perspective, the cities are already relatively ‘green’†(Dunham-Jones 2010). The city is more environmentally friendly per capita than the farm, but this has not been traditionally the position expressed in literature.
Often a topos presaging apocalyptic visions in the literature of modernism and post-modernism, the city has a long history as an object of representation.
Historically, literature has framed cities in very specific ways. A special issue of PMLA (January 2007) offers a broad set of discussions of some of these representational strategies, yet it does so largely outside the context of ecocriticial inquiry. From the early modern period to the twenty-first century, writers have addressed the city/country binary from a position that has sometimes leaned toward what is now properly known as ecocritical. Raymond Williams famously addresses the theoretical matter of the city/country binary from the perspective of class and environment, yet the theoretical trajectory within the environmental
humanities since then has been to look at the ecologies of cities (Bennett and Teague 1999; Christopher Schliephake 2014). How, then, do representations of country and city in literature speak to Anthropocene moments?
In one of the many books recently published on “the Anthropocene†(six since September 2015 alone), Jedediah Purdy notes the heavy irony of the Anthropocene condition namely that “the more we understand and the more our power increases, the more our control over nature seems a precarious fantasy†(2015). This special issue attempts to answer the following questions: In what ways do writing about cities reflect an awareness of this “precarious fantasy� How might the city be a
narrative vehicle that not only addresses the excesses of environmental exploitation but also nails down things that transcend time and space and become visible in times of environmental crisis—the hyperobjects about which Timothy Morton theorizes? What contradictions characterize the modern capitalist city, and how do representations of these contradictions determine narrative forms? In what ways is the city a space for the performance and production of “the human†and the “posthuman,†of nature and the end of nature? How does class figure in the representation of cities within the context of the Anthropocene? What is the space and challenge of animals? How does food function in different mega- cityscapes? How does the evolution of cities chart class and gender?
We welcome proposals on topics that clearly address contemporary discussions about the Anthropocene and the city. These could include but are not restricted to the following topics:
- Â The applicability of ecocritical theories to the representation of cities in literature
- Â Space, environment, and environmental justice within cities
- Â Trees and ethics in cities
- Â Air, water, food, and environment in cities
- Â Pets and sustainability in cities
-  Climate, strange weather, and their representations (dystopic visions,apocalyptic novels—Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, etc.)
- Â War, trauma, and the environment
- Â virtual spaces/real spaces
- Â eco-cities
- Â sex and gender in the city
- Â questions of scale, hyperobjects, slow violence
- Â environmental activism
Please send abstracts (750-word max) to concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw on or before March 15, 2016. Final essays of 8,000 words, 5-8 keywords, and a brief bio will be due on June 30, 2016. Manuscripts should follow the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Except for footnotes, which should be single-spaced, manuscripts must be double-spaced throughout and typeset in 12-point Times New Roman. For further instructions on documentation, consult our style guide http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw/submissions.php
Simon Estok is Professor of English and Senior Research Fellow (2014-2016) in the Department of English Language and Literature at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea. His publications include the monograph Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia. (Palgrave, 2011), several co-edited volumes—East Asian Ecocriticisms: A Critical Reader (Palgrave, 2013), International Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism (Routledge, 2013), Landscapes, Seascapes, and the Spatial Imagination (Routledge, 2015)—as well as publications in PMLA, Comparative Literature, Ariel: A Review of International Literature, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, CLCWeb:Comparative Literature and Culture, Journal of Canadian Studies, Comparative American Studies, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature.
Serena Chou is an Assistant Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Her research interests include agrarian literature, ecocriticism, and American literature. She has published articles in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Comparative Literature Studies, MELUS, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies as well as in numerous edited volumes. She currently is a member of the international research group Humanities for the Environment (HfE), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
*****
Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, currently indexed in Arts and Humanities Citation Index, is a peer-reviewed journal published two times per year by the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. Concentric is devoted to offering innovative perspectives on literary and
cultural issues and advancing the transcultural exchange of ideas. While committed to bringing Asian-based scholarship to the world academic community, Concentric welcomes original contributions from diverse national and cultural backgrounds. Each issue of Concentric publishes groups of essays on a special topic as well as papers on more general issues. http://www.concentric- literature.url.tw/
For submissions or general inquiries, please contact us at: concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw
Adam O’Brien’s new book Transactions with the World: Ecocriticism and the Environmental Sensibility of the New Hollywood is now in print. The publisher is offering a 50% discount for the first 30 days (Code OBR001 can be used when an order is placed via the book webpage. Simply enter code at checkout.)
Here’s a reminder of the book’s contents:
“In their bold experimentation and bracing engagement with culture and politics, the “New Hollywood†films of the late 1960s and early 1970s are justly celebrated contributions to American cinematic history. Relatively unexplored, however, has been the profound environmental sensibility that characterized movies such as The Wild Bunch, Chinatown, and Nashville. This brisk and engaging study explores how many hallmarks of New Hollywood filmmaking, such as the increased reliance on location shooting and the rejection of American self-mythologizing, made the era such a vividly “grounded†cinematic moment. Synthesizing a range of narrative, aesthetic, and ecocritical theories, it offers a genuinely fresh perspective on one of the most studied periods in film history.“
This could be your chance to write about Swamp Thing folks…
SWAMP SOUTHS: LITERARY AND CULTURAL ECOLOGIES (Edited Collection)
Deadline: June 15, 2016
Contact: Eric Gary Anderson, Taylor Hagood, Kirstin Squint, and Anthony Wilson
Email: swampsouths@gmail.com
A decade ago, two groundbreaking works seriously introduced the representation of swamps in literature and popular culture into critical discussion: Tynes Cowan’s The Slave in the Swamp: Disrupting the Plantation Narrative (2005) and Anthony Wilson’s Shadow and Shelter: the Swamp in Southern Culture (2006). Since the publication of these volumes, developments in geocritical, ecocritical, posthumanist, and critical animal studies; continued developments in scholarship on Native American cultures and literatures; new novels, poems, films, television programs, comics, and other cultural productions; further developments in the new Southern Studies; and rapidly changing ecological circumstances (the escalating disappearance of coastal wetlands, as well as the impacts of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe) have all presented new vocabularies and critical frameworks uniquely suited to furthering thinking about swamps. In light of these developments and in order to revisit and continue the critical examination of swamps, we believe this is a good moment to bring together the insights of multiple scholars in a collection: Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Geographies. A major university press has confirmed interest in this project.
The editors—Eric Gary Anderson, Taylor Hagood, Kirstin Squint, and Anthony Wilson—invite a wide range of essays that consider swamps in literature and popular culture from any era. The following ideas are provided as guidance:
- geocritical, ecocritical, posthumanist, critical animal studies frameworks
- comparative transnational or global studies approaches
- Southern swamps as “shelter†for runaway slaves, American Indians, Cajuns, and other marginalized peoples
- the implications of global climate change on human populations indigenous to Southern swamps such as the Seminole, Miccosukee, Houma, and Point au Chien peoples
- swamp-centric narratives as reflections of the impact of global climate change
- portrayals of Southern swamps in television and movies, particularly as a result of the evolution of “Hollywood Southâ€
- portrayals of Southern swamps in regional music including Cajun and zydeco or in popular music by artists such as Tab Benoit, Hank Williams, and others
- the ways that genre fiction writers such as James Lee Burke, Anne Rice, Carl Hiaasen, and Randy Wayne White use swamps as narrative tools
- how artistic and cultural artifacts such as Chitimacha baskets or the paintings of George Rodrigue reflect and tell stories about swamps
- why monsters, ghosts, vampires, and loup garou so often populate narratives of Southern swamps
500 word proposals should be sent to editors Eric Gary Anderson, Taylor Hagood, Kirstin Squint, and Anthony Wilson at swampsouths@gmail.com by June 15, 2016. For those asked to contribute to the collection, we anticipate that completed essays of approximately 5000-6000 words will be due by June 15, 2017. Proposals from both established and emerging scholars are welcomed, as is work from multiple perspectives and disciplines. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
Environmental Fellowship Grad Program at the University of Michigan
The Environmental Fellows Program supports career development of a new generation of environmental leaders and decision makers in environmental philanthropy. The Environmental Fellows Program (EFP) is a national program that seeks to diversify the environmental and conservation philanthropic sector by supporting the career aspirations of graduate students from traditionally underrepresented groups.
Funding decisions made in philanthropic organizations have a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of our natural and built environments and the human communities living therein. Efforts to build a more diverse philanthropic workforce parallel current diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the environmental sector. The Environmental Fellowship Program strives to connect these organizations with students who are passionate about environmental philanthropy.
Fellows are placed in a 12-week paid internship with one of our partner philanthropic organizations. Fellows may have the opportunity to be placed in a NGO funded by one of our partners. Partner foundations and organizations include, but are not limited to, the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) and their member organizations. Internships expose Fellows to a variety of career opportunities available in the philanthropic sector.
Fellows will build new skills and expand social networks that enhance their career portfolios through on-site mentoring, pre-program career development and diversity workshops and by attending a post-program retreat with EGA members. Through these experiences Fellows will expand their understanding of the research and decision making processes that guide foundation giving. Foundations and their grantees benefit from the ideas of highly motivated, energetic Fellows who can assist with new or existing projects.
We are seeking student applicants with an interest in environmental philanthropy as well as a passion and commitment to building a more equitable and inclusive environmental workforce.
If your foundation would like to support an Environmental Fellow please contact M’Lis Bartlett at 734-936-0900 or efp-snre@umich.edu.
We look forward to hearing from you!
The EFP program is an initiative of the School of Natural Resources and Environment’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Office at the University of Michigan. EFP is a proud partner of the Environmental Grantmakers Association.Â
Call for Papers
The Heart of the Gila: Wilderness and Water in the West
Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) 2016 Off-Year Symposium
June 8-11, 2016
Western New Mexico University
Silver City, NM
Deadline Extended to March 15, 2016
Letting our location be our guide in focusing the theme, the Gila Wilderness was established as the nation’s first wilderness area 91 years ago and continues to define our regional identity. The Gila River remains the last free-flowing river in the Southwest, but there is a current proposal in the state legislature to dam the river; local activists have been organizing to fight the proposal. Drought, compounded by climate change, has greatly affected our area, with the largest fire in New Mexico state history occurring in the Gila during 2012. The Gila was the northernmost region of the Mogollon People a millennium ago, and our region remains very culturally diverse with its close proximity to the Mexican-U.S. border.
We invite papers, roundtables, presentations, creative work, video presentations, and discussions from a range of disciplines and academic backgrounds that explore the past present, and future of wilderness, mythology of the West, Old West, New West, water, drought, climate change, desert, wastelands, atomic testing sites, military and western space, rivers, dams, tourism, fire, forest management, native cultures, migrant cultures, borders, activism, rhetoric of place, writers of place, writers of the West and Southwest (Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, too many to name), wilderness philosophy, and diversity in the West. We invite participants to interpret the theme broadly. We especially welcome creative writers, activists, graduate students, and academics working in the humanities and beyond to consider submitting to the symposium.
Symposium sessions will be 90-minutes long. Both scholarly and creative submissions are welcome. Pre- formed panels are encouraged.
- ï‚· Â proposals for pre-formed panels must include at least four presentations (papers, readings, provocations, responses, etc.), 15 minutes-max each, plus a chair; panel organizers must submit the proposal on behalf of all panelists (500 word abstract for the panel outlining topic, format, participants’ roles; 300 word abstract for each contribution as relevant to the format; all contact information)
- ï‚· Â proposals for panels may also include roundtables (five or six 10 minute-max presentations plus discussion)
- ï‚· Â individual paper/reading/performance submissions are for 15 minute presentations; 300 word abstracts should describe both form and content and include all contact information
Please submit your proposal by March 15, 2016 on-line at asle.wnmu.edu. We will notify you of its final status by March 21, 2016.
For questions about submissions, the program, the symposium site, or field trips, please contact the symposium organizer Dr. Michaelann Nelson at Michaelann.Nelson@wnmu.edu.
Plenary Speakers
Our list of invited speakers includes writers and scholars that are inspired by the people, culture, and landscape of our region in the Southwest.
-   David Gessner is the author of nine books, including All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West, as well as, My Green Manifesto, and The Tarball Chronicles, which won the 2012 Reed Award for Best Book on the Southern Environment and ASLE’s award for best book of creative writing in 2011 and 2012.
- ï‚· Â Sharman Russell, author of Diary of a Citizen Scientist: Chasing Tiger Beetles and Other New Ways of Engaging the World (WILLA Award Winner), as well as a dozen other books, writes primarily about nature and the southwest. She makes her home in the Gila.
- ï‚· Â Dave Foreman, founder of the direct action environmental group EarthFirst!, has written several books, including Confessions of an Eco-Warrior and Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching. He is currently the director of the Rewilding Institute, a think tank dedicated to promoting conservation and species extinction.
- ï‚· Â Lucy Tapahonso, Navajo Nation Poet Laureate, and author of several books of poetry, including The Women are Singing and Blue Horses Rush In. Her poetry is inspired by the idea that the feminine is a source of balance and power in the world.
-   Priscilla Ybarra, author of The Good Life: Mexican American Writing and the Environment. Dr. Ybarra’s work investigates Mexican American literature and environmental issues. She is a professor of English at the University of North Texas.
- ï‚· Â Phillip Connors, author of Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout (National Outdoor Book Award, Sigurd Olsen Nature Writing Award), has spent the last decade as a fire lookout in the Gila National Forest. He previously was an editor at the Wall Street Journal.
Travel Awards
We will offer ten awards of $250 each to graduate students and independent scholars to help defray the cost of attending the symposium. Information on how to apply can be found on the website.
Symposium Location
Western New Mexico University is a diverse, public, regional university with about 3,500 students. Silver City is located in southwestern New Mexico at 6,000 feet elevation. It is the gateway to the Gila National Wilderness Area, the United States’ first wilderness area, as well as Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument. It is known for its vibrant art community, locavore food scene, and all-around funky downtown. It has been recently named one of the top 20 small towns to visit by Smithsonian Magazine.
Sustainable Media explores the many ways that media and environment are intertwined from the exploitation of natural and human resources during media production to the installation and disposal of media in the landscape; from people’s engagement with environmental issues in film, television, and digital media to the mediating properties of ecologies themselves. Edited by Nicole Starosielski and Janet Walker, the assembled chapters expose how the social and representational practices of media culture are necessarily caught up with technologies, infrastructures, and environments.Through in-depth analyses of media theories, practices, and objects including cell phone towers, ecologically-themed video games, Geiger counters for registering radiation, and sound waves traveling through the ocean, contributors question the sustainability of the media we build, exchange, and inhabit and chart emerging alternatives for media ecologies.
Introduction
Janet Walker and Nicole Starosielski, Introduction: Sustainable Media
Part One: Resource Media
1. Hunter Vaughan, 500,000 Kilowatts of Stardust: An Eco-Materialist Reframing of Singin’ in the Rain
2. Nicole Starosielski, Pipeline Ecologies: Rural Entanglements of Fiber-Optic Cables
3. Shane Brennan, Making Data Sustainable: Backup Culture and Risk Perception
4. Colin Milburn, “Ain’t No Way Offa This Train:” Final Fantasy VII and the Pwning of Environmental Crisis
Part Two: Social Ecologies, Mediating Environments
5. Rahul Mukherjee, Mediating Infrastructures: (Im)Mobile Toxicity and Cell Antenna Publics
6. Minori Ishida, The Lack of Media: The Invisible Domain post 3.11
7. John Shiga, Ping and the Material Meanings of Ocean Sound
8. Amy Rust, “Going the Distance:” Steadicam’s Ecological Aesthetic
Part Three: (Un)sustainable Materialities
9. Sean Cubitt, Ecologies of Fabrication
10. Jennifer Gabrys, Re-thingifying the Internet of Things
11. Jussi Parikka, So-called Nature: Friedrich Kittler and Ecological Media Materialism
Part Four: Scaling, Modeling, Coupling
12. Alenda Y. Chang, Think Microscopically, Act Galactically? The Science of Scale in Video Games
13. Bishnupriya Ghosh, Toward Symbiosis: Human-viral Futures in the “Molecular Movies”
14. Erica Robles-Anderson and Max Liboiron, Coupling Complexity: Ecology, Cybernetics, and Non-Representational Modes of Environmental Action
15. Peter Krapp, The Invisible Axis: From Polar Media to Planetary Networks
Dear Ecomedia Community:
Dear ASLE Member,
My name is Jennifer Irish, and I am the Program Assistant for the study abroad program titled Learning and Service Journey into Amazonia at Florida State University. Dr. Juan Carlos Galeano, a fellow member of ASLE, is the Program Director, and we both feel that this program will be of interest to you and your students.
Journey into Amazonia is a Service Learning Program in the Peruvian Amazon that takes place annually during the month of July. By using interdisciplinary perspectives from cultural anthropology, spiritual ecology, and environmental studies, as well as internships and/or research experience in Amazonian communities, students of this program can gain deeper understanding about landscape, cultural systems of Amazonia, philosophy of life and history of native groups, colonists and farmers. A photographic essay created by a former participant last summer can be viewed at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5laV3ZBTicAQlY3YnBDUU5mZm8/view?usp=sharing
The official program website is: http://www.international.fsu.edu/types/College/Peru/Default.aspx and more detailed information on the program, including assessments from previous participants, can be found on Dr. Galeano’s website http://myweb.fsu.edu/jgaleano in the section Journey into Amazonia.
If you have any questions about the program, please feel free to contact myself or Dr. Galeano at jgaleano@fsu.eduWe hope that you are having a great semester!Warmly,Jennifer
Jennifer IrishGraduate Teaching Assistant of SpanishProgram Assistant for Journey into AmazoniaÂModern Languages and LinguisticsFlorida State Universityjirish@fsu.edu
The Heart of the Gila: Wilderness and Water in the West
June 8-11, 2016
Western New Mexico University, Silver City, NM
asle.wnmu.edu (a work in progress)
Call for Papers (PDF)
Deadline Extended:Â March 15, 2016
Letting our location be our guide in focusing the theme, the Gila Wilderness was established as the nation’s first wilderness area 91 years ago and continues to define our regional identity. The Gila River remains the last free-flowing river in the Southwest, but there is a current proposal in the state legislature to dam the river; local activists have been organizing to fight the proposal. Drought, compounded by climate change, has greatly affected our area, with the largest fire in New Mexico state history occurring in the Gila during 2012. The Gila was the northernmost region of the Mogollon People a millennium ago, and our region remains very culturally diverse with its close proximity to the Mexican-U.S. border.
We invite papers, roundtables, presentations, creative work, video presentations, and discussions from a range of disciplines and academic backgrounds that explore the past present, and future of wilderness, mythology of the West, Old West, New West, water, drought, climate change, desert, wastelands, atomic testing sites, military and western space, rivers, dams, tourism, fire, forest management, native cultures, migrant cultures, borders, activism, rhetoric of place, writers of place, writers of the West and Southwest (Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, too many to name), wilderness philosophy, and diversity in the West. We invite participants to interpret the theme broadly. We especially welcome creative writers, activists, graduate students, and academics working in the humanities and beyond to consider submitting to the symposium.
Symposium sessions will be 90-minutes long. Both scholarly and creative submissions are welcome. Pre-formed panels are encouraged.
- proposals for pre-formed panels must include at least four presentations (papers, readings, provocations, responses, etc.), 15 minutes-max each, plus a chair; panel organizers must submit the proposal on behalf of all panelists (500 word abstract for the panel outlining topic, format, participants’ roles; 300 word abstract for each contribution as relevant to the format; all contact information)
- proposals for panels may also include roundtables (five or six 10 minute-max presentations plus discussion)
- individual paper/reading/performance submissions are for 15 minute presentations; 300 word abstracts should describe both form and content and include all contact information
Deadline Extended: Please submit your proposal by March 15, 2016 online at asle.wnmu.edu. We will notify you of its final status by March 7, 2016. For questions about submissions, the program, the symposium site, or field trips, please contact the symposium organizer Dr. Michaelann Nelson at Michaelann.Nelson@wnmu.edu.
Plenary Speakers
Our list of invited speakers includes writers and scholars that are inspired by the people, culture, and landscape of our region in the Southwest. The list of speakers will continue to grow as we receive confirmations from our invited guests.
David Gessner is the author of nine books, including All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West, as well as, My Green Manifesto, and The Tarball Chronicles, which won the 2012 Reed Award for Best Book on the Southern Environment and ASLE’s award for best book of creative writing in 2011 and 2012.
Sharman Russell, author of Diary of a Citizen Scientist: Chasing Tiger Beetles and Other New Ways of Engaging the World (WILLA Award Winner), as well as a dozen other books, writes primarily about nature and the southwest. She makes her home in the Gila.
Lucy Tapahonso, Navajo Nation Poet Laureate, and author of several books of poetry, including The Women are Singing and Blue Horses Rush In. Her poetry is inspired by the idea that the feminine is a source of balance and power in the world.
Priscilla Ybarra, author of The Good Life: Mexican American Writing and the Environment. Dr. Ybarra’s work investigates Mexican American literature and environmental issues, as well as the connections between contemporary Chicana feminist theory and environmental thought. She is a professor of English at the University of North Texas.
Phillip Connors, author of Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout (National Outdoor Book Award, Sigurd Olsen Nature Writing Award), has spent the last decade as a fire lookout in the Gila National Forest. He previously was an editor at the Wall Street Journal.
Dave Foreman, founder of the direct action environmental group EarthFirst!, has written several books, including Confessions of an Eco-Warrior and Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching. He is currently the director of the Rewilding Institute, a think tank dedicated to promoting conservation and species extinction.
Travel Awards
We will offer ten awards of $250 each to graduate students and independent scholars to help defray the cost of attending the symposium. Information on how to apply for these awards can be found on the website.
Symposium Location
Western New Mexico University is a diverse, public, regional university with about 3,500 students. Silver City is located in southwestern New Mexico at 6,000 feet elevation. It is the gateway to the Gila National Wilderness Area, the United States’ first wilderness area, as well as Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument. It is known for its vibrant art community, locavore food scene, and all-around funky downtown. It has been recently named one of the top 20 small towns to visit by Smithsonian Magazine.