Foucault News

Call for Papers for Special Issue “Colors in Econarratives about the Human and More-than-Human World“, Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies

Guest Editors: Professor Peggy Karpouzou and Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki

Colors are not only visual stimuli, but also social constructs that play a pivotal role in our perception, psychology, behavior and communication. Colors also evoke a range of emotions, senses and memories that are deeply rooted in various cultural, national and traditional contexts. The meaning, role and impact of colors can vary widely across different linguistic, cultural and historical periods, reflecting complex interactions between language, aesthetics and relationships. The various differences in color symbolism illustrate how cultural beliefs and practices surrounding our daily life, events, occasions and habits can shape the meanings attributed to colors that can evolve over time, e.g. the color black symbolizes death or evil, the color white symbolizes peace and purity (e.g., Conroy, 1921; Birren, 2013; Feisner and Reed, 2014). Colors’ varieties are actually described in terms of “color pluralism” (Mizrahi, 2023), which is not only restricted to the varieties of colors, but it is open to the different perspectives between humans and species when both perceive each other via senses e.g. see them, feel them, taste them in food, etc.

Understanding the complex and dynamic relationship between colors and nature requires an interdisciplinary approach in Environmental Humanities that draws on multiple fields of knowledge, such as literary theory and cultural criticism, psychology, linguistics, arts, philosophy, etc. in order to understand the colors’ nature, function, role and impact on life-forms and the world around us. For instance, ecophenomenology and ecopsychology focus on the embodied experience and psychology within nature respectively, e.g., how we perceive and interpret the colors around us as well as how they affect our psychology by often considering them as a ‘healing space’. Our thinking is oriented to the study of nature, ecology and colors articulated in terms of “prismatic ecology” which delves into the matter of how the vibrant worlds are formed by colors (Cohen, 2013), the reflections, symbolisms, function and role within the natural processes and phenomena as well as their impact on the human and more-than-human world (e.g. flora, fauna, micro-organisms, etc.).

An ecological narration describes human interactions with other species and the physical environment, drawing from narratology, ecology, critical discourse analysis as well as ecolinguistics, offering insights on how ecology, language and narration raise awareness and play a pivotal role in structuring our life. Econarratives’ kinds, structure, content, rhetoric and poetics convey environmental understanding and knowledge via spatiotemporal organization, characterization, narratological techniques etc., paving the way to offer new perspectives and approaches to re-connect humanity with nature. We query how readers perceive and engage with econarratives and how the processes of encountering them stand to affect real-word behaviors and values (e.g., James and Morel, 2023; von Mossner, 2017; Slovic, 2008). In this sense, econarratives mobilize affect and offer factual insights into the functioning of ecologies by describing life-forms and their entanglements.

By studying econarratives of colors we will focus on questions such as what kind of narrations are embodied theoretically, literally, philosophically, etc. How do cultural norms and values shape our ecological thinking on colors? How are colors involved with our senses and what kind of visual streams are offered? How about colors’ representations in cultural, e.g. literal, aesthetic, etc. texts, and how about the role and impact of colors in human and more-than-human life-forms’ behaviors, senses, emotions, moods, thinking and welfare? How is our thought expanded to colors beyond texts and works (Iovino and Oppermann, 2013)? How do colors communicate e.g., social, political and religious meanings in different cultures, including indigenous communities? How do environmental concerns affect the production and consumption of colors? How do authors, artists, etc. use color to express eco-aesthetic, symbolic, or functional ideas? How do scholars study colors in Environmental Humanities, Posthumanities, etc.?

In this special issue, econarratives of colors explore the complexities of pairing material environments with their representations with narrative forms of environmental understanding and ‘propose’ a change in how we interact with the environment today. This endeavor could be effectively executed while exploring storytelling of coloring imaginaries and sustainable futures as ‘narrative rehabilitation’ to draw attention to values and responsibilities and envision strategies to avoid possible ‘disastrous narrative endings’. Econarratives of colors could also be a new approach to overcoming the traditional dichotomies of how we see the world around us, including ourselves, laying the ground to think beyond colors in a more-than-human world. They might also encourage us to think beyond the classical narratological analysis, and consider new analytical tools suited to the current planetary challenges.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to the following:

• narratives of colors in Environmental Humanities, Posthumanities, Environmental Digital Humanities, Blue Humanities, Ocean Humanities, Plant Humanities, Animal Studies, Medical Humanities, Energy Humanities, Public Humanities, Citizen Humanities
• colors in -cenes, e.g. Anthropocene, Symbiocene, Capitalocene, etc.
• colors in ecocriticism, eco-poetics, ecofeminism, queer ecologies, etc.
• econarratives of colors in comparative and global literature
• econarratives of colors in continental philosophy
• econarratives of colors in visual, media and film studies
• colors and soundscape ecologies
• colors in eco-/bio-art
• colors in food studies
• ecotheological, ecopsychological and indigenous environmental approaches on colors
• colors and biopolitics
• the term, concept and language of colors in ecolinguistics
• colors in green pedagogies/education studies
• storytelling of re-connecting/repairing humanity with nature via colors
• storytelling of coloring imaginaries and sustainable futures

The working language is English. Please send an abstract of up to 300 words and further queries to Professor Karpouzou’s e-mail at pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr and Dr. Zampaki’s e-mail at nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr until the 31st of August 2024. After the abstracts’ final selection and approval/acceptance, the Editors will notify the author(s) to submit their full in articles (6.000-8.000 words) to their e-mails by the end of February 2025.

URL: https://nebraskapressjournals.unl.edu/calls-for-papers/

CFP: Special Issue: Ecologies of Life and Death in the Anthropocene, Lagoonscapes
The Venice Journal of Environmental Humanities

Guest editors: Professor Peggy Karpouzou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece & Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Both life and death are natural states of humans and non-humans, coexisting and at the same time in an implicit ‘conflict’. The perception and mostly the experiences of death have varied through different local communities historically, often aiming to explain death through philosophical or religious interpretations of human and non-humans’ afterlife (e.g. Merchant 1979).

In the present condition of a precarious planetary time when environmental crises, wars, violence and pandemics are before us, entire ecosystems are annihilated or even destroyed. Human and more-than-human world’s vulnerabilities get amplified as death and loss become urgent environmental concerns, manifested in many cultural connotations, e.g. literary, artistic, philosophical etc., seeking to explore and explain death matter in nature as well as the consequences of death on species’ behavior and psychology. “It is about recognizing our shared vulnerabilities to human and non-human bodies, and embracing our complicity in the death of these other bodies- however painful that process may be” (Cunsolo 2017, 3-4).

Writers and artists have explored the representations of death matters beyond the human, the mourning for past, present and future ecological loss (Barnett 2022), while attempting to visualize and express ecological grief, mourning and melancholia, carve out memorial spaces and also imagine practices of the afterlife. For example, in literature, the poetic subgenre of elegy found as (anti-)pastoral elegy, eco-elegy or “ecological lament” (Morton 2009) is built on the poet’s acceptance of “death as natural […], in line with the season pattern and rebirth” (Twiddy 2012). Here death is not only synonymous with a biological end, but a rebirth, a state of a new being. However, the loss of nature itself, turning it into a ‘mirror’ of human loss, redefines the traditional elegy’s search for consolation (Sacks 1987).

Grounded in the theoretical framework of death studies, this special issue explores life and death eco-imaginaries and engagements, as they are interwoven through the study of the human and more-than-human world. It is there where an ontology of ecologies of life and death is being exposed and where the ethical territories of eco-grief and eco-mourning unfold. Therefore, the possibility of studying the ecology of life and death is questioned: How do we come up with death issues in nature? Is nature grievable? How do we mourn for it? How about the circular and linear way between life and death in nature’s spatiality and time? How about writers and artists’ perception of ecologies of life and death and how are they represented in texts and artworks? How do ecologies of life and death affect the way of writing or artistic outcome? How about the posthuman perspective on dead bodies and afterlife issues? What will it mean to live and die in the Anthropocene? (e.g., Scranton, 2016; Stiegler 2018).

While the ecologies of life and death give way to ‘decentralize’, even ‘deconstruct’ concepts like melancholy, grief and mourning, also ‘view’ the last ones as an approach of resilience and symbiosis between them, even a ‘spur’ to act. In this sense, there is a need to re-organize what is holding humanity back, such as the fear of humans’ destructive power, and take action to achieve life’s preservation in order to build sustainable futures. We particularly welcome submissions that revolve around, but are not limited to, the following axes and concepts:

• ecologies of life and death in ecocriticism, ecopsychology, eco/bio-philosophies, bioethics, plant humanities, animal studies, etc.
• eco-anxiety, eco-grief, eco-mourning, solastalgia, toxic environments, extinction studies, political ecology of death
• ecologies of life and death in -cene, e.g., Anthropocene, Neganthropocene, Necrocene, Symbiocene etc.
• the genre of elegy (e.g., eco-elegy, “ecological lament”, (anti-)pastoral elegy etc.
• ecologies of life and death in continental philosophy
• ecologies of life and death in posthumanities (e.g., posthumanism, transhumanism, a-humanism, meta-humanism, anti-humanism, super-humanism etc.)
• ecologies of life and death in medical humanities (e.g., pandemics, epidemics, plagues, biotechnology etc.)
• ecologies of life and death in religious studies and anthropology
• postcolonial narrations of death
• “necropolitics” (Mbembe), “bare life” (Agamben), “slow death” (Berlant)
• ecologies of life and death in indigenous studies
• human and more-than-human world in queer death studies and gothic studies
• ecologies of life and death in disability studies
• ecologies of life and death in arts and aesthetics / ars moriendi
• ecologies of life and death in visual studies, media studies, film studies
• memorials, ways of remembering, rituals of eco-mourning
• images, tools and practices of the afterlife in literature, philosophy and arts (e.g., mummification, cryonics, end-of-life applications, 3D printing for facial reconstruction etc.)

Deadline for full articles’ submissions: Kindly submit a full article of no more than 50,000 characters (spaces and references included), an abstract of no more than 650 characters spaces included, and at least five keywords by 31 of July 2024 at the latest.

Should your article be accepted for inclusion in the upcoming December issue, you will receive an email containing instructions on how to upload your final version within 15 days from receipt. Such articles must be suitable for blind peer review.

Please make sure to obtain the necessary reproduction rights documentation if you need to include photos in your text.

Articles must be written in English. In case you have further queries, you are welcome to send an e-mail to the Editors’ e-mails: pkarpouzou@phil.uoa.gr and nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr.

urls: https://ecfpeerflow.unive.it/abstracts/form/journal/25/324

https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/the-venice-journal-of-environmental-humanities/info#call