Call for Expressions of Interest (EOI)
Conference Panel on Ecocinema and Water
Under Western Skies Conference, Mount Royal University, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, September 27-30 2016
Water: Events, Trends, Analysis:Â This panel invites papers on ecocinema that are in some way connected to water.
Under Western Skies is an interdisciplinary, biennial conference whose past keynote speakers have included Adrian Ivakhiv, Bron Taylor, Vandana Shiva, Donald Worster, Richard Whyte, Patty Limerick, and Gary Paul Nabhan.
Please submit proposals to mtrono@mtroyal.ca no later than January 31st, 2016, although general inquiries are welcome at any time.
Call for Proposals: Affective Ecocriticism
Co-edited by Jennifer Ladino and Kyle Bladow
Although ecocritics have long tried to articulate complex emotional relationships to various environments, ecocritical scholarship has much to gain from the rich body of work on affect and emotion circulating within social and cultural theory, geography, psychology, philosophy, queer theory, feminist theory, and neuroscience, among other disciplines. The “affective turn†and concurrent trend toward new materialisms signal an opportune moment to conjoin affect theory and ecocriticism more deliberately. Concepts like Yi-Fu Tuan’s “topophilia,†Lawrence Buell’s “ecoglobalist affects,†and Ursula Heise’s “eco-cosmopolitanism†have helped foreground the affective dimensions of ecological thinking and feeling at various scales. Recent books—including Tonya K. Davidson, Ondine Park, and Rob Shields’ Ecologies of Affect (2011); Karen Thornber’s Ecoambiguity (2012); Adrian Ivakhiv’s Ecologies of the Moving Image (2013); Alexa Weik von Mossner’s Moving Environments (2014); and Heather Houser’s Ecosickness in Contemporary Fiction (2014)—have undertaken more sustained engagements with affect.
This surge of interest in affect marks a growing need for more scholarship at the intersection of affect and ecocriticism. Affect is ecological “by nature,†since it operates at the confluence of texts, environments, and bodies—including nonhuman and inanimate bodies. Affect theory disrupts discrete notions of embodied selfhood as well as static notions of environment and encourages us to trace the trajectories of what Stacy Alaimo has called trans-corporeal encounters that are intricate and dynamic. Likewise, material ecocriticism foregrounds the instability and processive nature of all environments and objects, but (unlike much affect theory) it takes environments seriously, as agents in generating and shaping affect.
This collection imagines a more affective—and perhaps, also, more effective—ecocriticism. We invite essays that work with affect and/or emotion theory in a range of texts (including literature, film, television, and visual art, as well as digital or physical environments) and in any of affect theory’s strands, including the history of emotions; the cultural study of emotions; cognitive and/or neuroscientific understandings of affect; the transmission of affect; and affect theory in a cultural studies vein, often understood (following Gilles Deleuze, Brian Massumi and others) as non-signifying, pre-cognitive bodily feeling. We solicit essays from established or emerging scholars that take up existing threads or investigate new ways that affect theory and ecocriticism connect. Essays might consider, for instance:
•how affective neologisms like Sianne Ngai’s—including “non-cathartic†affects like “stuplimity,†“irritation,†and others—might enrich ecocritical scholarship
•how built structures and natural landscapes might have affective capacities
•how ecocritical attention to the Anthropocene might enrich affect theory, perhaps by identifying emerging affects and/or new ways that affect is transmitted by/within texts that foreground deep time and/or future-oriented narratives
•how affect theory might enhance ecocritical understandings of environmental loss and of the links between emotional investment and political action
•how indigenous scholarship on grief, trauma and other personal or intergenerational affects might enrich and reshape affect theory and/or ecocritical theory
•how what Neil Campbell calls “affective critical regionality†might inform ecocritical scholarship of various kinds
•how affect theory’s roots in feminist and queer theory might connect to similar roots in the environmental humanities
•how theories like Tuan’s topophilia, E.O. Wilson’s biophilia, and Simon Estok’s ecophobia might inform thinking about literatures and cultures of the Anthropocene
•how emotions like anger, fear, grief, nostalgia, and solastalgia might respond to accelerated environmental change and increased numbers of environmental refugees
•how affect theory might enhance ecocritical work on classic nature tropes of the sublime, the pastoral, the frontier, and the wilderness, as well as emergent tropes like the postmodern or toxic sublime and the post-pastoral
•how affect theory might contribute further to scholarship in ecocinema, queer ecology, and the environmental humanities more broadly
Palgrave Macmillan has expressed interest in publishing this collection as part of its new series: “Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism.†Rowman & Littlefield has also expressed interest in acquiring the manuscript for its “Ecocritical Theory and Practice†series.
Please email a 500-word abstract and brief biography to Jennifer Ladino jladino@uidaho.edu and Kyle Bladow kbladow@unr.edu by February 1, 2016.
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY (IAEP) announces their Twentieth Annual Meeting to be held October 20-22, 2016 at the Salt Lake City Hilton, Salt Lake City, Utah
IAEP offers a forum for the philosophical discussion of our relation to the environment. Â Embracing a broad understanding of environmental philosophy as well as new affinities with other disciplines in the environmental humanities, IAEP encourages papers in the following areas:
* Â Â environmental philosophy, environmental ethics, environmental aesthetics
* Â Â postdevelopment/postcolonial theories, environmental justice, ecofeminism, environmental political theory
* Â Â environment and disability, queer ecologies, race and environment, indigeneity
*   ecocriticism, critical animal studies, environment and affect, urban ecology, environment and technology, philosophy of architecture
*   ontology, philosophy of nature, theology, philosophy of religion as they relate to contemporary environmental issues
IAEP welcomes a diversity of philosophical approaches, including those inspired by Continental philosophy, the history of philosophy, and American philosophy, as well as theoretically robust engagements with other disciplines.
Please send a single-spaced proposal (500-600 words) PLUS short abstract (75-100 words) in Word format to Ladelle McWhorter, IAEP Secretary, atiaepsecretary@gmail.com <mailto:iaepsecretary@gmail.com>. The /body/ of the email should include detailed contact information (including physical and electronic addresses as well as academic affiliation) of the author(s) AND should also indicate whether your presentation will require audio/visual equipment. (Without the latter indication there is no guarantee that such equipment will be available for your session at the conference.) Then in/an attachment /to the email please submit a single Word document containing both the proposal and the short abstract, without any identifying information as to the author(s). (Short abstracts of accepted proposals will be printed in the conference program.)
Panel proposals should include as attachments a 350 – 500 word abstract for the panel as a whole (350-500 words) plus (separately) a proposal and short abstract for each paper as described above. The body of the email should include contact information for each author. Panels may consist of a maximum of three papers. Each paper proposal will be judged on its own merit, and individual papers may be accepted without acceptance of the entire panel.
An author may submit only one proposal for consideration (by IAEP or one of its satellite groups) each year. Papers previously published or under review for publication will not be accepted. All those included on the program must be members of IAEP at the time of the conference.Information about IAEP and membership is available at www.environmentalphilosophy.org <http://www.environmentalphilosophy.org>.
$250Â PRIZEÂ FORÂ BESTÂ GRADUATEÂ STUDENTÂ ESSAY
Graduate Students: please indicate in the body of your email submission whether you wish to be considered for this prize. If your proposal is accepted you will be asked to submit a complete paper (3000 words maximum, excluding notes) by September 15. The winner will be announced during the conference.
*DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 15, 2016. *NOTICE OF DECISION: MID-MAY
FOR MORE INFOcontact IAEP Secretary Ladelle McWhorter, lmcwhort@richmond.edu <mailto:lmcwhort@richmond.edu>.
So exciting. Thanks to UCSB for hosting what is sure to be an amazing conference:
Power Dynamics: 2016 Media and the Environment Conference
University of California, Santa Barbara
April 29 and 30, 2016
Keynote address by University of Michigan Assistant Professor and poet Tung-Hui Hu, author of works including A Prehistory of the Cloud (2015, MIT Press) and Greenhouses, Lighthouses (2013, Copper Canyon Press).
As information and communication technologies proliferate, environmental issues become even more entwined at every level of media, including production, distribution, consumption, storage, and disposal. Yet, while these material consequences of media deleteriously impact the surrounding communities, they largely remain marginal within the consumerist imaginary. For instance, mining coltan ore for electronics production in the Democratic Republic of Congo has led to political conflicts and unsettled the regional ecology. Dismantling e-waste at the putative end of its lifecycle has also caused fatal illnesses among workers in Guiyu, China, while the legacy of haphazard electronics and chemical dumping in Silicon Valley has produced hundreds of toxic sites that endure decades later.
Responding to this pivotal era of Anthropocenic climate change and rapidly transforming media economies, this inaugural conference seeks to bring together scholars and media practitioners whose work explores the many significant confluences of media and the
environment. It will aim to conceptualize the terms “media†and “environment†in expansive and innovative ways to encourage a diverse range of approaches and to build upon the necessarily interdisciplinary conversation of scholars such as Lisa Parks, Stephanie
LeMenager, and Nadia Bozak.
In particular, we are interested in scholarly presentations and media exhibitions that think through the heuristic of “power dynamics,†considering the dynamics of power relations but also power itself as a dynamic and mutable notion. Submissions may address some of the
multiple manifestations of power—political, activist, cultural, economic, military, judicial—and how they simultaneously shape and are shaped by media and environments. They may also strive to consider the processes of power generation, including resource extraction,
energy usage, and technological infrastructures, that connect devices and fuel media industries and the implications for environmentalist concerns.
Among the questions we hope to address are: Who becomes empowered and disempowered through particular media practices? How do media address or efface their environmental impacts and how can activists and academics develop new imaginaries in response? How do
various energy sources, like electric, hydroelectric, and nuclear power, factor into the design and operation of different media systems? How is power shifting in the wake of new media and changing environments?
Panelists will have 15-20 minutes for paper presentations. We are open to a variety of lengths for media exhibitions by practitioners, but foresee being able to accommodate more short-form films into the schedule. Please email a proposal of 250-300 words and a brief bio to Daniel Grinberg (dgrinberg@umail.ucsb.edu) and Christopher Walker (caw2105@gmail.com). The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2016.
I wanted to pass along this conference information; they have been very receptive to ecomedia studies in my experience. -Steve
CALL FOR PAPERS — DEADLINE JANUARY 30, 2016
CONSOLE-ING PASSIONS:Â International Conference on Television, Video, Audio, New Media, and Feminism
June 16-18, 2016
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
Console-ing Passions was founded in 1989 by a group of feminist media scholars and artists looking to create a space to present work and foster scholarship on issues of television, culture, and identity, with an emphasis on gender and sexuality. Â The first Console-ing Passions conference was held at the University of Iowa in 1992. Â Since then, Console-ing Passions has expanded to become not only the most important conference for scholars studying gender in television but also among the top conferences for scholars of media generally.
The 2016 Conference Organizing Committee invites proposals for individual papers, pre-constituted panels, and pre-constituted forums that consider television, video, audio, or new media alongside gender, sexuality, race, or other intersected components of identity. Â We also welcome proposals for video, audio, or new media creative works related to gender and other modes of identity.
Possible paper, panel, and forum topics include:
â— Â Â Â Â Â media production and industries
â— Â Â Â Â Â media audiences and fans
â— Â Â Â Â Â textual analysis and criticism
â— Â Â Â Â Â media theory
â— Â Â Â Â Â feminist, queer, and critical race theory
â— Â Â Â Â Â media history
â— Â Â Â Â Â neoliberalism and the economy
â— Â Â Â Â Â transmedia and convergence culture
â— Â Â Â Â Â globalism and transnational cultural flows
â— Â Â Â Â Â theories of post-television
â— Â Â Â Â Â social media and the Internet
â— Â Â Â Â Â music and sound studies
â— Â Â Â Â Â gaming and virtual worlds
â— Â Â Â Â Â social movements and media activism
â— Â Â Â Â Â politics and gender
â— Â Â Â Â Â religion and media
â— Â Â Â Â Â youth culture and media
Submission Guidelines
The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM (US Eastern Daylight Time) on Saturday, January 30, 2016.
Please submit your proposal here: Â https://console-ingpassions.submittable.com/submit
Proposers may propose only one paper or creative project, and only one CP Forum. Â Attendees may present only one paper or creative project, and may participate in only one CP Forum.
Individual Papers: Individuals submitting paper proposals should provide an abstract of 250 words, a short bio, and contact information. Co-authored papers are acceptable.
Panels: Panel coordinators should submit a 250-word rationale for the pre-constituted panel as a whole. Â Coordinators should submit a 250-word abstract, a short bio, and contact information for each panel participant. Panels should include 3-4 papers. Â Co-authored papers are acceptable. Â Panels that include a diversity of panelist affiliations and experience levels are strongly encouraged.
CP Forums: Building upon the success of discussion-based roundtables at Flow and other conferences, we invite proposals for a limited number of pre-constituted roundtables that focus either on scholarly topics in the field or matters of professional interest.  We are especially interested in roundtables that are likely to engage wide participation by conference attendees, and which reflect our field’s diversity of cultural identities, institutions, methodologies, and professional rank or employment status.  Proposals should be submitted by a convener, who will propose a question (<100 words) and solicit brief (<250 words) responses from 5-7 respondents.  Proposals should also include a brief bio and contact information for the convener and each participant.  If the proposal is accepted, each participant will write a response to the question of no more than 600 words, which must be submitted to the conference organizers 2 weeks prior to the conference.  Those papers will be circulated to all attendees and will form the basis of a public discussion during the CP Forum sessions. Roundtable participants’ remarks at the conference should be brief in order to create substantive discussion with attendees.
Creative Works: We invite proposals for video, audio, or new media screenings or exhibits. Â Proposals should consist of a 350-word abstract (including the length and format of the work), a short bio of the producer/director, and contact information. Â If the work is viewable online, please submit a URL.
Please direct any questions about the conference and the submission process to: cpatnd2016@gmail.com.
Visit our website http://www.console-ingpassions.org/conf-nd/ for updates about events, schedules, travel information, and more.
Conference Organizers: Christine Becker, Michael Kackman, Mary Celeste Kearney, Susan Ohmer, and Pamela Robertson Wojcik / Department of Film, Television, & Theatre / University of Notre Dame.
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Reposted from AESS.info
AESS 2016 Conference
CALL FOR PROPOSALS NOW OPEN!
We are pleased to invite you to submit a proposal to lead a session or make a presentation at the 2016 annual meeting of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) to be held on 8-11 June 2016 at American University in Washington DC with full participation from other colleges and universities in the larger DC metropolitan area.
AESS is now accepting proposals for individual paper and poster presentations, as well as proposals for full panels, workshops, discussion symposia, and mealtime roundtables. For proposed multi-person sessions please secure a commitment from participants. In addition, AESS will make every effort to group individual presentations together as thematic sessions.
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Submitting Your Proposal
As always, we invite proposals that speak to the conference theme or otherwise advance the mission of AESS: to encourage interdisciplinary approaches to environmental research, teaching, and problem-solving.
Please note that we expect all presenters to register for the conference. One day registration and single session-only registration will be available to promote local participation.
Please visit our conference webpage for more information on how to submit a proposal. Address all questions to the Conference Chair, Jim McMahon, conference@aessonline.org.
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The conference Encountering Materiality: Science, Art, Language will take place in Geneva, Switzerland from 23-25 June 2016.
This conference is co-organized by the English Department of the University of Geneva and by the Dirt Foundation.
- Download the Call for Participation.
- Submit your abstract.
Description
What is materiality?
As contemporary societies meet philosophical and earthly limits, we are being confronted with the difficulty of articulating what materiality and matter are. Faced with anthropogenic alterations of numerous ecosystems and in light of developments in the sciences of ecology, geology and climatology, we have been forced to rethink our place and function in the collective environment of planet Earth. Developments in the neurosciences have challenged the limits and boundaries of the mind and of the individual and have shown us that consciousness, body, language and environment constantly interrelate. The very nature of reality has been redefined by quantum physics and experiments realized in accelerators and colliders. In addition to all this, the leap in information technology enabled by the internet has radically altered the way we perceive and interact with the world, our bodies, ourselves, and each other. Many scientists, artists and scholars now see matter as an active agent in our becoming.
Drawing on the fields of New Materialism and the Environmental Humanities, the conference is not restricted to them. Rather, it will address how sciences, arts and texts enact encounters with materiality as an entanglement of relationships, meanings, matter and movement, and it will respond to the following questions:
- How do we encounter materiality, materials and/or matter in the twenty-first century?
- How do language and literary language in particular offer ways of encountering materiality and/or matter?
- How have the developments in ecology, neurosciences, physics and new media changed the way we encounter the world of matter?
- How can our encounters with matter undermine, redefine or produce ways of knowing, of being and of doing that are more in tune with the challenges that contemporary societies—in all their diversity—face?
- How can our current understandings of materiality help us to rethink the role of artistic, literary and scientific practices in fashioning the material world?
- How can scientists, artists and scholars share their findings on matter and materiality with the public?
- How can a conversation among sciences, arts and the humanities shed light on our relationships with matter, meaning and action?
Call for Participation
With materiality as its focus and transdisciplinarity as its mode, this conference will address the diverse ways of knowing, interpreting and engaging with matter. Whether your subject matter is textual, substantial, corporeal, environmental or incommensurable, and whether you wish to create, think, analyze, measure or discuss, we are looking forward to hearing how you engage with materiality in your field of research and practice.
In keeping with the transdisciplinary approach of the event, we encourage conference submissions that are open to all modes of knowing. Participants are invited to discuss, present, exhibit or enact a wide range of topics that fall into the theme “encountering materialityâ€.
Please submit your 300-word proposal online (http://encounteringmateriality.org/abstract/) by 1 February 2016. Indicate the type of participation (e.g., presentation, performance). If your work, portions of it or references to it are present in media form (picture, video, website, etc.), please send us a copy or a link to it. You will receive a notification of acceptance at the end of February 2016.
Please note that although the main language of the conference is English, we also welcome abstracts and presentations in French.
Recommendations:
Oral presentations should be 20 minutes long, with a 10-minute question time at the end of each paper.
For performances, please indicate the duration (between 10 and 20 minutes) and the space and material needed.
We welcome preconstituted panels that include different modes of expression. In this case, please indicate the types of presentation/performance and the duration of each.
Do not hesitate to contact the organizers by email if you have any question, with “EM2016†as the subject of the email.
Deadline Approaching: CFP Ecocinema @ Film Studies Association of Canada Conference
Worth Reposting: Deadline approaching
Call for Expressions of Interest (EOI)
Proposed Panel for Film Studies Association of Canada (FSAC)
May 31 – June 2, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Panel Abstract:Â Ecocinema and Ecocritical Film Theory
This panel invites papers that undertake analysis of the assumptions, approaches, and philosophical orientations that presently characterize eco-critical labours in film studies. These analyses need not be purely theoretical or formally explicit. Critiques could be illuminatingly staged during examination of films and other moving-image texts. What approaches primarily obtain in this area? What theories of agency, audience, or activism? What theories best negotiate the intersection of film and materiality? Of what would an eco-reading consist if aimed at cinema unconcerned with the environment? What techniques from other disciplines may be productively brought to bear?
Please submit proposals to mtrono@mtroyal.ca no later than Dec. 4, although general inquiries are welcome at any time. Chosen candidates will be notified by Dec. 8.