CFP is now closed!

The Call for Reading Nature proposals is now officially closed. Thanks to everyone who submitted a proposal.

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.

Possible Topics for Paper Proposals

• 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 sentient 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).

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After the conference, participants will be invited to send in an extended version of their papers (6,000-8,000 words) for a Reading Nature publication. An official Call For Articles will be launched in January 2012. After evaluation, a selection of the papers submitted will be published in a volume of articles.