CFP: Texts that Called to You

CFP: Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities

A CALL FOR ESSAYS ON TEXTS THAT CALLED TO YOU

What catalyzes the relationship between the humanities and ecological awareness? How does the critical imagination learn to account for the different varieties of what counts as “the environment”? What are the possibilities and limits of the humanities as it seeks to converse with what has all too often been seen as a material, rather than a textual, object of study? What texts or models surprise our imaginations, and turn work in the humanities to the environment, while also deepening and expanding our idea of what counts as environmental criticism?

Resilience invites short essays of no fewer than 2K and no more than 4K words about a text – narrative or visual, ephemeral or artifactual, digital or material – that prompted you to begin to think about the environmental humanities. What texts taught you to see the possibilities of a relationship between the humanities and the environment? What text did you argue with and set aside, pick up and annotate? What text modeled a new way of thinking for you, suggested a new way of conceptualizing the human, the posthuman, the natural or built environment, the sense of place in the natural or the industrialized worlds? What text still speaks to you? What texts were you addressing as you developed your ideas? What particular line or word or image did you linger over, and why? What was the alchemical reaction between your moment of encountering a text and your ability to see a new dimension of scholarly practice in the environmental humanities?

We seek essays that are exploratory and ruminative, essays that depart from the conventional format of the academic essay. We are interested in essays that allow readers to see how you think, to follow along as you describe how you create meaningful connections between your scholarly thinking and your practices of seeing and interpreting the world around you. We welcome essays about scholarly books or essays, poetry, children’s books, photographs, news stories, film, video, blogs, art installations, political demonstrations, or found objects.

Please send contributions to resiliencejournal@gmail.com by January 15, 2014.