“Brown” by jakerome (CC BY 2.0)

CALL FOR PAPERS: Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies & Thought

Vol 7, No 1 (2018): “Muddied Waters: Decomposing the Anthropocene”

“Progress means: humanity emerges from its spellbound state no longer under the spell of progress as well, itself nature, by becoming aware of its own indigenousness to nature and by halting the mastery over nature through which nature continues its mastery.” — Theodor Adorno, “Progress” (p. 62)

“This future is unthinkable. Yet here we are, thinking it.” — Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology (p. 1)

Over the past decade, the term “Anthropocene” – which identifies a geological age marked by global capitalism, nuclear development, rapid industrialization, urban sprawl and the digital revolution – has gained considerable traction in scientific and philosophical communities as a viable and arguably necessary framework for thinking through the imperatives of global economics and the long-lasting effects of our current anthropocentric worldview. Likewise, it has brought these often diffuse academic communities together in order to address a wide range of prescient social, political, and ecological issues.

For its seventh issue, Pivot is calling for papers that not only critically address the Anthropocene as our current geological epoch but, in doing so, attend to pertinent questions concerning the social, political, theoretical, and ecological efficacy of ecocriticism as a framework counter-to the imperatives of both anthropocentrism and global capitalism. Contributors may also wish to consider, more specifically, the myriad ways in which the Anthropocene corresponds to transhistories of indigeneity, imperialism, colonialism, and systemic inequality.

We invite submissions from across disciplinary borders that engage any aspect of the field of inquiry in a wide range of historical periods and subject areas – literature, fine arts, politics, religion/spirituality, science, and technology – in order to address the significance of our current geological epoch and, if possible, its decomposition.

Possible Topics Include:

• Environmental impacts and resistance
• Eco-networks, assemblages, human/non-human alliances
• Epidemic, illness, biological “corruption” and hybridity
• Movement, migration (human/non-human).
• Technology, mechanism, cyborgs
• Extinction, ecological collapse
• Climate change and environmental refugee crises
• Citizenship, sovereignty, and borderlands
• Indigenous knowledge and representations of land
• Decolonization, cultural resistance, and resurgence
• Ontological and theological theories in the Anthropocene
• Feminist, queer, and BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) eco-perspectives
• Afro-futurisms and afro-surrealism
• The limits of interdisciplinarity; contaminating disciplinary lines
• New ecocritical practices; the future of ecocriticism
• Science literatures, science and literature, the literature of science
• Geography and renaming/unnaming
• Poetics of land ruptures, mining, and/or fossil fuelsThe deadline for submissions is October 2, 2017. Authors are requested to submit full articles of 6000–8000 words and an accompanying abstract of 250 words (maximum) by registering online at http://pivot.journals.yorku.ca/.