Deadline: September 30th, 2024
Contact: Dr. Chiara Xausa, University of Bologna
Email: chiara.xausa2@unibo.it

Call for articles for a special issue of de genere – Journal of Literary, Postcolonial, and Gender Studies
on “Feminist and Intersectional Ecologies in Literature and Visual Culture”

Editors for this issue: Giulia Fabbri (Sapienza University of Rome) and Chiara Xausa (University of Bologna)

In her 2008 article Ecofeminism without Nature?, Stacy Alaimo writes that the possibilities for connecting feminism and environmentalism are myriads. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that all feminist theories are environmentalist at heart or oriented toward multispecies justice, since there is no natural alliance between these perspectives. As the historical association between women and nature has long been considered one of the causes of women’s oppression, most feminist theory has worked to disentangle women from nature – the so-called “flight from nature” (Alaimo 2000) – and to transport the category of woman into the realm of culture, failing to counter predominant dualisms and a sharp opposition between nature and culture. Critical ecofeminism challenges the dualism of human and nature – as well as culture and nature, human and non-human, male and female – that conceives the former term as normative and universal, while the latter exists as a mere resource to be exploited and is subjected to processes of Othering. The contemporary linkage between feminism and environmentalism is attributed to the radical French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne, who coined the term écofeminisme in her 1974 text, Le féminisme ou la mort. As of today, what distinguishes ecofeminism from other feminist approaches to environmentalism is its claim that there is a structural and close connection between the domination of women and the over-exploitation of natural resources.

This issue of the journal de genere intends to move beyond the woman-nature connection, with the aim of investigating how the perspectives, texts, artworks, and practices elaborated by subjectivities marginalized on the grounds of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, disability, and other forms of intersectional discrimination can provide invaluable contributions to the Environmental Humanities. We invite articles that engage with the alliances, tensions, and contradictions within and between feminism and environmentalism: as suggested by Stacy Alaimo in her most recent book Exposed. Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (2016), the interrelations between these two movements are indeed “generative – far beyond the territory where they overlap” (12).

Recently, the field of the Environmental Humanities has flourished into many different directions, exploring the intersections between feminism(s), queer theories, climate justice, the animal question, and decoloniality. Consider, for example, Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation by Sunaura Taylor (2017), Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters by Aph Ko and Syl Ko (2018), Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson (2010), and Queer Ecofeminism: From Binary Environmental Endeavours to Postgender Pursuits by Asmae Ourkiya (2023). In recent years, moreover, a proliferation of studies in the context of Italian Environmental Humanities has investigated the articulations of intersecting systems of oppression involving human and non-human subjects – see, by way of example, the volumes, Per farla finita con la famiglia by Angela Balzano (2021), Cosa può un compost by Antonia Anna Ferrante (2022), Cospirazione animale by Marco Reggio (2022), and Animali si diventa by Federica Timeto (2024). These texts are contributing to the debate about the articulations of the Anthropatriarchy in the contemporary Italian public debate, at a time when the differential impact of the environmental crisis on individuals subjected to intersectional discrimination is becoming more and more evident.

This issue intends to map and investigate (in an inevitably partial way) old and new entanglements (as well as future horizons) between intersectional feminist theories and practices and the Environmental Humanities in literature and visual culture in a variety of national contexts and/or with a comparative approach. In both literature and visual culture, the linkage of ecofeminist theories, the transversality of struggles, and the many complexities brought by intersectionality remains indeed to be thoroughly scrutinized. We are especially interested in inviting submissions that engage with cultural representations of such intersections by focusing on a range of topics (such as feminism and the posthuman, ecofeminism and intersectionality, gender and climate change, queer ecologies, animal issues) through different perspectives of analysis (including post- and decolonial studies, critical race theory, queer theory, indigenous epistemologies, disability studies).

Possible areas of investigation may include:

– climate fiction/solarpunk/eco-fiction;

– theater and performing arts;

– film, photography, television, webseries;

– art, artivism and aesthetic practices.

Please send your proposals for articles, interviews or creative interventions (max. 500 words, in English or Italian), and a short biography to degenere.journal@gmail.com, giulia.fabbri@uniroma1.it, and chiara.xausa2@unibo.it. For submission guidelines and further info please check our submissions page.

Deadline for abstract submission: September 30th, 2024

Acceptance of proposals will be notified by October 15th, 2024

Deadline for submitting final accepted articles: February 15th, 2025

https://www.degenere-journal.it/index.php/degenere/callforpapers2

Posted on August 26, 2024