#ecocriticism
“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”
The ASLE-UKI Postgraduate Conference 2016:
‘A change of (s)cene: reviewing our place in a new geological epoch’
University of Lincoln
31st August – 2nd September 2016
I shall be exhibiting and contributing to a postgraduate conference during Autumn that’s using ‘Habitus’ (2013) as it’s headline image.
‘In 2016, the International Commission on Stratigraphy is due to consider formalising the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch. In light of this, the conference aims to review and reflect on what literature and culture might have to say about our place in a world shaped by human activity. With a keen interest in ecological systems, anthropogenic processes and the interaction between humans and nonhumans, ecocritics and the environmental humanities have already begun to open up discussion about the origins and implications of the Anthropocene; ultimately questioning what this might mean for humanity and our planetary home. The conference will facilitate an interdisciplinary dialogue between different approaches to the study of climate change, environmental distress and various eco-catastrophes.’
Submissions:
Individual papers will be 20 minutes long. Please send a 300 word abstract and a 50 word biography to Michelle Poland, Rebecca Ford and Alex Bevan – [email protected] – by 31st March 2016. Proposals for panels are also welcome: please send a 200 word summary of the rationale for the panel, in addition to individual abstracts. Any further enquires can sent to the above email address.
Possible topics might include, but are certainly not limited to:
- Planetary history and deep time; human and natural temporalities
- Major or minor, global or local climatic events
- Postcolonial ecocriticism
- Disaster, extinction, end of nature, apocalypse
- Waste, pollution and sustainability
- Industrial developments, new technology, energy challenges
- Nature/culture, human/nonhuman boundaries
- Narratives of change, imagined futures
- Affects and aesthetics
- Romantic nature, Gothic nature, EcoGothic
- Ecopsychology: internal and external crisis
- Environmental philosophy, environmental and animal ethics, environmental law (e.g. 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris)
Post link
“…the function of poetry…is to nourish the spirit of man by giving him the cosmos to suckle.”
—Francis Ponge
