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Reading Nature: Cultural Perspectives on Environmental Imagery

Reading Nature: Cultural Perspectives on Environmental Imagery

Publié le par Bérenger Boulay (Source : Organizing Comitee Reading Nature)

Complutense University of Madrid and Friends of Thoreau Research Group UAH are pleased to announce the international conference Reading Nature, which will take place in Madrid, Spain, on December 14-16, 2011.

Environmental disciplines have recently gained prominence due to the potentially devastating consequences of climate change: increasing natural disasters, the greenhouse effect, temperature variations, changing sea levels, etc. Such issues have raised awareness on the necessity for a drastic change in thinking. Ecocriticism—along with other green disciplines dealing with the relationship between society and the environment—places nature as the center of the intellectual debate. As Kate Rigby states, "culture constructs the prism through which we know nature." Reading Nature Conference aims to explore from a critical perspective how such a prism is constructed. International reputed experts, along with young scholars will examine the way in which different notions on nature and the environment are conveyed in cultural manifestations.

Confirmed Plenary Speakers:

Bill Mckibben (videoconferencing) (Middlebury College) Paul Waldau (Harvard University, Yale University, Tufts University) Phillip Terrie (Bowling Green State University) Mario Petrucci (Artist and Poet) Carmen Flys (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares) María Novo (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia)

We invite proposals for papers on the following topics:

  • Ecopoetics: the rhetoric of environmentalism
  • Sense of place and identity
  • Reassessing ecocriticism: race, gender, sexuality and the environment
  • Transcending ecocriticism: ecofeminism and feminine geographies; ecotheology; postcolonial/transnational ecocriticism and global ecologies
  • Animal studies: literary, visual and cultural representations of animals in history and in contemporary society. Figuring animals as sentimental beings.
  • Indigenous environmental aesthetics
  • Representations of 'wilderness' in Anglo-American culture; mythologizing and demythologizing nature in literature and the arts
  • Genre fiction and environmental representation: sciencie-fiction, gothic fiction, utopia, dystopia, narratives of apocalypse in all media
  • Disaster narratives and environmental concerns in current narrative discuourses: literature, media, and the arts
  • Writing/Representing climate change; popular perceptions of climate change
  • Ecology and Literary studies: methodological tools and theoretical perspectives
  • Other related topics

Abstracts must be sent via e-mail before the 30th April 2011 to readingnature.ucm@gmail.com. The Organizing Committee will confirm receiving your abstract via e-mail as soon as possible. The authors will be notified of paper acceptance by the 20th May 2011.
Abstracts may be submitted in English or Spanish.
Papers are expected to be approximately 2500 words (15-20 minutes).

For full details, see our call for papers on our website.

Please feel free to forward this announcement to whoever may be interested.

The Organizing Committee: Isabel Durán Giménez-RicoDámaso López García

Eduardo Valls Oyarzún Claudia Alonso RecarteMaría Colom Jiménez

Rebeca Cordero Sánchez

Rebeca Gualberto Valverde

Noelia Malla García