Winning lecture to be delivered at the 2018 Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye, Thursday 31 May 2018

Sustainability is a matter of literature as much as it is about politics or environmental science. The stories we tell, the poems we compose, the dramas we enact—all provide spaces for inspiration, imagination, and debate over what it means to live sustainably. This competition invites submissions that explore how literature, in any of its forms, responds to the past, present, or future environment or to environmental concerns, be it through engagements with nature, place, and landscape, with the life sciences, ecology, or environmental science, or in the context of debates around sustainability, energy use, or climate change. Full details HERE

Petrocultures 2018 will be held in Glasgow on August 29th – September 2nd. Petrocultures is a research cluster at the University of Alberta which “supports research on the social and cultural implications of oil and energy on individuals, communities”. More information can be found HERE

Chapter proposals are invited for an edited volume titled Ecofeminist Science Fiction. Interested authors should send a 300-word abstract, 200-word biography, and sample of a previously published chapter or article to dvakoch@meti.org by February 1, 2018. Essays representing science fiction from around the world are especially encouraged, as are contributions that are significantly informed by both science fiction studies and ecofeminism. More information HERE

Gothic and horror fictions have long functioned as vivid reflections of contemporary cultural fears. As we inch ever closer toward an anthropogenic ecological crisis, this type
of fiction demands our attention. Gothic Nature seeks to interrogate the place of non-human nature in horror and the Gothic today, and showcasing the most exciting and innovative research currently being conducted in the field. The editors are especially interested for the inaugural issue in articles which address ecocritical theory and endeavour to define and discern the distinctions between ‘ecohorror’ and ‘ecogothic’. Academic articles from a variety of different subject backgrounds, as well as interdisciplinary work are welcome. Further details on the journal HERE. Follow on Twitter @GothicNatureTCD

Gardens and their contexts were continually reassessed throughout the nineteenth century in form, content and significance as ownership, technologies and affective aesthetics shifted throughout the period. Essays of 6000-8000 words – with an emphasis in material ecocriticism and ecogothic – are invited for a collection to be published by Manchester University Press. Full details HERE

The intent of this interdisciplinary symposium and exhibition is to reflect on the research process, of being in research, and the documents which facilitate and inform it. The term ‘document’ is open ended, it may refer to text or image; audio or visual; object, artefact or specimen. A document can look forward and back; it can be ‘reached in to’ as a source of ideas and it can be ‘reaching’ in its speculations. From notebook to soil sample, post-it note to statistical data, the document may be the marker of a thought or a way to manage the restless plurality of thinking. Whatever they be, what is of interest is how documents operate as research and the possibilities they enshrine. Full details HERE

The latest issue of the journal L’Esprit Créateur (57.1) edited by Daniel A. Finch-Race and Julien Weber, focuses on French Ecocriticism. It illustrates the richness of a growing field by exploring French and francophone materials that have received little previous attention in ecocritical terms. Link HERE.

New from Peter Lang – French Ecocriticism: From the Early Modern Period to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Daniel Finch-Race and Stephanie Posthumus. This book considers environmental issues in a range of French texts. Scholars from Britain, Canada, France and the US examine the work of writers and thinkers including Montaigne, Hugo, Zola, Yourcenar and Houellebecq. Further details HERE.  

The University of Gloucestershire and the International Ecolinguistics Association are pleased to announce the launch of a new open online course: The Stories We Live by: a free online course in ecolinguistics, which has been created for public benefit. More information HERE

Nature, much like the feminine, has been fetishized, exoticized, and romanticized as a signifier emptied out. Gendered Ecologies and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers invites article-length typescripts (e.g., abstracts and/or 15-20 page drafts) that consider the spaces and places women writers have occupied as part of gendering the term ecology—whether masculine, feminine, or androgynous. The edition will feature three guiding principles: transhistorical, transatlantic, and transcorporeality (Alaimo, Bodily Natures, 2010). Full details HERE