CFP: SWAMP SOUTHS: LITERARY AND CULTURAL ECOLOGIES (Edited Collection)

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 South”
• 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.