BREAKING NEW GROUND
Pluralistic approaches
to global ecocriticism
Graduate Colloquium of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
University of Maryland-College Park
Friday, March 3, 2017 & Saturday, March 4, 2017
Keynote Speakers: Dr. Stephanie Posthumus, McGill University and Dr. Juan Duchesne-Winter, University of Pittsburgh
ABSTRACT PROPOSALS DUE: January 9, 2017
For technological breakthroughs, legislative reforms, and paper covenants about environmental welfare to take effect, or even to be generated in the first place, requires a climate of transformed environmental values, perception, and will. To that end, the power of story, image, and artistic performance and the resources of aesthetics, ethics and cultural theory are crucial.
Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism (2005)
Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism (2005)
It is this transformation of values, perception, and will that is the ultimate goal of “Breaking New Ground”: to engage the interdisciplinary scholar through an examination of these representations. Our interdisciplinary scope of engagement with the field of ecocriticism draws from multiple languages and cultures. Within the ecocritical foreign language tradition, every contributing voice represents a unique and different history, a separate cultural truth and identity. Contemporary scholars use ecocritical models and frameworks such as posthumanism, ecophilosophical positionality, the scientific sanctioning of literary value, and poststructuralism to better understand the impact of forces such as colonialism and global capitalism on both culture and biodiversity.
The graduate students of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures invite traditional paper and/or multimedia proposals that explore, destabilize, or reify fixed notions and categorizations of nature, place, subject, nation, and narrative. Readings and interpretations may be from any type of cultural production/object (literature, writings, storytelling, poetry, film, music, and performance as well as other media) within the foreign language tradition. Contributions from graduate student scholars of all academic disciplines will be considered.
Although we are most interested in scholarly work done outside of the Anglo-American tradition, the interdisciplinary, ecocritical approach provokes a discussion of geographical, cultural, and temporal perspectives, as well as an intersectionality with fields such as feminism, queer studies, and postcolonial studies.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
The graduate students of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures invite traditional paper and/or multimedia proposals that explore, destabilize, or reify fixed notions and categorizations of nature, place, subject, nation, and narrative. Readings and interpretations may be from any type of cultural production/object (literature, writings, storytelling, poetry, film, music, and performance as well as other media) within the foreign language tradition. Contributions from graduate student scholars of all academic disciplines will be considered.
Although we are most interested in scholarly work done outside of the Anglo-American tradition, the interdisciplinary, ecocritical approach provokes a discussion of geographical, cultural, and temporal perspectives, as well as an intersectionality with fields such as feminism, queer studies, and postcolonial studies.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Animal studies
- Environmentalism within Digital Humanities
- Decadence and the metropolis
- Urban development
- Physicality and the body
- Materialism
- Miasma theory
- Detritus and trash
- Cyborg theory
- Utopia/dystopia
- The greening of spaces, individuals, nations
- Language and ecology
- Pedagogical approaches in the digital age
- Teaching environmental concerns and the foreign language classroom
- Cross-pollution of environment and language
- Public Policy and influence of critical theory
- Cultural identity
- Surveillance and environment
Abstract proposals and presentations should be in English. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted to [email protected] by January 9, 2017. Abstracts should include name, institutional affiliation, a brief bio, three keywords, any A/V requirements, and a word count.