Wednesday 8 November 2023

Invitation to Publish: Contribute to #Environment and #Society #BookSeries

 Environment and Society, a book series published by Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, is seeking proposals covering a broad range of topics in environmental studies from the perspectives of the social sciences and humanities. Learn more about the 30 books already in the series on the publisher’s website: https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/_/LEXES


Books in this series include both monographs and edited volumes that are grounded in the realities of ecological issues identified by the natural sciences. Our authors and contributors come from disciplines including but not limited to anthropology, architecture, area studies, communication studies, economics, ethics, gender studies, geography, history, law, pedagogy, philosophy, political science, psychology, religious studies, sociology, and theology. To foster a constructive dialogue between these researchers and environmental scientists, the Environment and Society series publishes work that is relevant to those engaged in environmental studies, while also being of interest to scholars from the author’s primary discipline.

As scholars examine the environmental challenges facing humanity, they increasingly recognize that solutions require a focus on the human causes and consequences of these threats, and not merely a focus on the scientific and technical issues. To meet this need, books in this series help the reader understand contemporary environmental concerns, while offering concrete steps to address these problems.

Please send proposals for Environment and Society to General Editor Douglas Vakoch (dvakoch@meti.org) and Acquisitions Editor Courtney Morales (cmorales@rowman.com).

Proposal Guidelines:
To submit a proposal, please send:

  • a prospectus (see below for details)
  • a detailed table of contents
  • one or two sample chapters
  • your curriculum vitae

If you are proposing a contributed volume, please include titles, affiliations, and brief resumes for each of the contributors. The prospectus should include:

  • description of the book, describing the core themes, arguments, issues, goals, and/or topics of the work, what makes it unique, what questions it seeks to answer, and why you are qualified to write it (2–5 pages).
  • A description of your target audience (undergraduate or graduate students? scholars? professionals?).
  • An analysis of competing or similar books (including publishers and dates), indicating distinctive and original elements of your project that set it apart from these other works.
  • A list of courses in which your book might be used as a text or supplementary text, indicating the course level at which this book may be used.
  • An indication of whether any part of your manuscript has been published previously, and if it is a doctoral dissertation, what changes you are proposing to prepare it for publication.
  • The length of the manuscript either as a word count. Will there be figures, tables, or other non-text material, and, if so, approximately how many? If the text is not complete, please still estimate its final length, not including the non-text material.
  • If the manuscript is not complete, an estimation of when it will be finished. Is there a particular date by which you hope the book will be published (due to a historical anniversary, conference, etc.?)
  • The names of four to seven respected scholars in your field with whom you have no personal or professional relationship. Include their titles, affiliations, e-mail addresses, and/or mailing addresses.
  • An indication of whether the manuscript is under consideration by other publishers.

Tuesday 7 November 2023

Call for Papers: Ecocritical Theory and Practice Book Series

 




Ecocritical Theory and Practice, a book series published by Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, is seeking proposals at the interface of literary/cultural studies and the environment. Learn more about the 90+ books already published in the series on the publisher’s website: https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/_/ETAP/Ecocritical-Theory-and-Practice

Works that explore environmental issues through literatures, oral traditions, and cultural/media practices around the world are welcome. The series features books by established ecocritics that examine the intersection of theory and practice, including both monographs and edited volumes. Contemporary and historical works are equally appropriate.

Proposals are invited in the range of topics covered by ecocriticism, including but not limited to works informed by

  • cross-cultural and transnational approaches
  • postcolonial studies
  • ecofeminism
  • ecospirituality, ecotheology, and religious studies
  • film/media and visual cultural studies
  • environmental aesthetics and arts
  • ecopoetics
  • animal studies.

Please send proposals for Ecocritical Theory and Practice to General Editor Douglas Vakoch (dvakoch@meti.org) and Acquisitions Editor Courtney Morales (cmorales@rowman.com).

Proposal Guidelines:
To submit a proposal, please send:

  • a prospectus (see below for details)
  • a detailed table of contents
  • one or two sample chapters
  • your curriculum vitae

If you are proposing a contributed volume, please include titles, affiliations, and brief resumes for each of the contributors. The prospectus should include:

  • description of the book, describing the core themes, arguments, issues, goals, and/or topics of the work, what makes it unique, what questions it seeks to answer, and why you are qualified to write it (2–5 pages).
  • A description of your target audience (undergraduate or graduate students? scholars? professionals?).
  • An analysis of competing or similar books (including publishers and dates), indicating distinctive and original elements of your project that set it apart from these other works.
  • A list of courses in which your book might be used as a text or supplementary text, indicating the course level at which this book may be used.
  • An indication of whether any part of your manuscript has been published previously, and if it is a doctoral dissertation, what changes you are proposing to prepare it for publication.
  • The length of the manuscript either as a word count. Will there be figures, tables, or other non-text material, and, if so, approximately how many? If the text is not complete, please still estimate its final length, not including the non-text material.
  • If the manuscript is not complete, an estimation of when it will be finished. Is there a particular date by which you hope the book will be published (due to a historical anniversary, conference, etc.?)
  • The names of four to seven respected scholars in your field with whom you have no personal or professional relationship. Include their titles, affiliations, e-mail addresses, and/or mailing addresses.
  • An indication of whether the manuscript is under consideration by other publishers.

Ecocritical Theory and Practice’s Advisory Board:

  • Auður Aðalsteinsdóttir (Iceland)
  • Sinan Akıllı (Turkey)
  • Zélia Bora (Brazil)
  • Nicolás Campisi (USA)
  • Chan Kit-sze Amy (Hong Kong)
  • Michelle Deininger (Wales)
  • Nicole Dittmer (USA)
  • Melanie Ruth Duckworth (Norway)
  • Jonathan Elmore (USA)
  • Lenka Filipova (Germany)
  • Christina Holmes (USA)
  • Peter I-min Huang (Taiwan)
  • Serenella Iovino (USA)
  • Özlem Karadağ (Turkey)
  • Katarina Leppänen (Sweden)
  • Keitaro Morita (Japan)
  • Anupama Nayar C V (India)
  • Serpil Oppermann (Turkey)
  • John Charles Ryan (Australia)
  • Joshua Schuster (Canada)
  • Murali Sivaramakrishnan (India)
  • Scott Slovic (USA)
  • David Taylor (USA)
  • Rebekah Taylor-Wiseman (USA)

Monday 6 November 2023

Call for the Participants for an Academic association for African literary studies in India

 This goes out in the public domain that if you are working or researching in India in either African literature or African diasporic literature including African American literature, this is the place for you. I want to club together academicians both teachers and Research scholars under one umbrella of this academic association. The aim of the proposed academic body will be to establish its own dedicated journal of African literature including African diasporic and African American literature in India. The association will also hold its annual conference in collaboration with Indian universities and will also organize talks and seminars along with other literary activities as decided by the office bearers time to time. If you work in the said area and are dedicated to work for the cause of promoting African Literature in India, feel free to send your expression of entrust in about 200 words including your designation, affiliation and research experience to the following email africanliterary6@gmail.com

 before 30th November 2023. 

Sunday 5 November 2023

Call for Book Chapters - The #Planetary #Subaltern: On #South #Asian #History, #Theory, and #Texts in the #Anthropocene

 Concept Note

The Anthropocene, alluding to a geological epoch in which human presence accounts for the most consequential geophysical force, is subjected to criticism for representing homo sapiens as a homogeneous species within a geological stratum. The critics of the Anthropocene hypothesis charge it with the flaw of considering the human as a singular carbon-emitting subject, ignoring such “anthropological differences” that recognise humans in diverse sociological strata with varied ethnic, gendered, cultural, and geopolitical identities (Chakrabarty 2012, 14). While ignoring the human-induced geophysical changes is impossible, it is equally essential to recognise the uneven distribution of those changes and their impacts based on a region’s demography and geo-political situation. Such a disparity intensifies the discussion on human agency, justice, and human subjectivity, which are inextricably linked to human history. Therefore, it seems crucial to critically assess the human subjects with their plurality vis-à-vis the concurrent human-driven planetary crises in the Anthropocene. 

The term ‘Anthropocene’, emphasising the human agency as the dominant geophysical factor, has been doing rounds in the field of science since the 1980s. During the decade, a group of South Asian historians known as the Subaltern Studies Collective also emerged to reclaim the agency of humans on the sociopolitical fringes, and their endeavours resulted in an analogous writing of marginal groups’ history. While the Anthropocene notion implies a persistent impact of human agency on planetary conditions, Subaltern Studies aims to isolate something resembling an agency for the Subaltern – no matter how incoherent and inconsistent. In Subaltern Studies 2.0 (2022), Milinda Banerjee and Jelle J.P. Wouters, echoing the ethos of the earlier collective, widen the scope by stressing the interdependence of ‘multibeing communities,’ a necessary intervention amid the planetary crises.  The planetary crisis “calls on us to extend ideas of politics and justice to the nonhuman […]” (Chakrabarty 2021, 13) and to humans on the margins. Any political interpretation contextualised in the anthropocenic planetary crises also requires the ‘plural epistemologies’ as an interpretative strategy. The ‘plural epistemologies’ represent multiple beings beyond the dominant history to recognise the subaltern subjects as historical beings. The subaltern subjects as historical beings cannot escape their socio-geographical situatedness in the present planetary crises. Humanists have criticised the Anthropocene discourse for overlooking subaltern subjects’ situatedness in its attempt to reify the human as a monolithic force. Acknowledging the (largely ignored) subalterns’ historicity in the epoch characterised by human-caused planetary crises, it appears feasible to call into question the relevance of the Anthropocene discourse and investigate the sense it makes in South Asia, particularly when viewed through the critical lenses of the Subaltern Studies. 

In this regard, the proposed volume aims to facilitate an eventful dialogue between the two discursive fields of study of the Anthropocene and the Subaltern Studies to (re)define human agency and subjecthood in the human-dominated epoch, primarily through analysing subaltern narratives in South Asia. The volume intends to further questions: Does the human-dominated epoch only refer to humans with power? Does the Anthropocene grossly disregard the subaltern communities’ presence? What role does the subaltern play in the Anthropocene? How do we speculate the future of subalterns amidst the planetary crisis? By doing so, the volume aims to open an avenue of study, archiving the South Asian subaltern communities’ micro-narratives concerning the current crises, which include global warming, resource deficit, shortage of water, deforestation, the production of climate refugees, gendered violence and disease, pandemic, and terrorism, among others. Furthermore, the suggested new field of study, supported by the Anthropocene discourses and the Subaltern Studies together, seeks to cater to the new modes of interpretation required for defining the human subject amid the anthropocenic planetary crises, which we would refer to as the ‘planetary subaltern’ in the volume. The volume, thus, considers ‘planetary subaltern’ as a theoretical strategy to trace the South Asian subaltern history and anticipate its future in the Anthropocene.



The volume aims to engage the discourses on the Anthropocene and the Subaltern from three broad perspectives: theorising the ‘Planetary Subaltern’; textual politics of the ‘Planetary Subaltern’; and planetary crisis and the subaltern subject. Thus, we invite chapter proposals that address the following (but not limited to) issues contextualised in South Asia:

  • A theoretical approach to the ‘Planetary Subaltern.’
  • Textual and media representations of the ‘Planetary Subaltern.’
  • Historiography of the ‘Planetary Subaltern’
  • Indigenous communities and the planetary crisis 
  • Human-nonhuman interaction on the fringes
  • Refugee crisis, migration and statelessness 
  • Gendered subaltern and the Anthropocene
  • Peasant History and the Anthropocene
  • Agrarian condition in the Anthropocene
  • Postpoliticised environment and the Subaltern
  • Planetary crisis and the class conflict
  • Casteism and speciesism 
  • Planetary crisis and disease 
  • Pandemic and the Subaltern

 




References

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2012. “Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change.” New Literary History 43 (1):1-18. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23259358

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2021. The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Banerjee, Milinda, and Jelle J.P. Wouters. 2022. Subaltern Studies 2.0: Being Against the Capitalocene. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. 

 

*We are currently in discussions with a renowned publishing house.

 

 

Chapter proposals within 400 words and a short bio-note (50 words) are to be submitted by 15 November 2023.

The invited chapters within 6000-7000 words (excluding end notes and citations) will be due on 15 March 2024 (tentatively).

The chapter abstracts and the full-length chapters are to be submitted to the email ID theplanetarysubaltern@gmail.com

 



 Editors: Somasree Sarkar (Assistant Professor, Ghoshpukur College, University of North Bengal) and Agnibha Maity (Senior Research Fellow, University of North Bengal)

For further queries, please write to us at somasree.2008@gmail.com or rs_agnibha@nbu.ac.in.

Saturday 4 November 2023

Call For Articles : Environmental Narratives and the Eremitic Turn



 Environmental Narratives and the Eremitic Turn (due Nov. 30)

Different Visions: New Perspectives on Medieval Art (an indexed, online, open-access journal) invites proposals for essays that explore the diverse ways in which eremitic bodies, ascetic practice, and the landscape of the wilderness, were represented and imagined in visual culture. This topic encompasses the locus of eremitic experience, which might be from any religious tradition or geographical location, whether wilderness, mountain, or desert, broadly conceived. It also encompasses the bodies – individual and communal – who chose to inhabit that landscape (as a real or imagined place), and their lived experience. We welcome submissions that:

  • consider the resonance and meaning of the ascetic tradition across time and space
  • investigate the ascetic tradition and its entanglement with notions of the landscape as wilderness and holy mountain
  • adopt an environmental or ecocritical approach to the eremitic experience
  • explore the tensions between, for example, wilderness and cultivation, inhospitable and fertile landscapes, ascetic practice and the eremitic impulse
  • consider the re-imagining or invocation of the historical desert in monastic, mendicant or other contexts
  • explore the continuing resonance of the eremitic, in symbolic or ecologic terms, in our contemporary world
  • approach the themes above from a global perspective

This special issue engages with urgent contemporary concerns about the impact of human activity on the earth that sustains us. It resonates with recent scholarly interest in the relationship between humanity and nature in the pre- and early modern period, seeking a broad, inclusive, and cross-disciplinary reflection on the visual representation of this interdependence.

Contact Information

Jennifer Borland and Nancy Thompson

Contact Email
differentvisionsjournal@gmail.com