Deadline: 01/03/2022
Contact: Sara Villamarín-Freire
Email: sara.vfreire@udc.es

Call for Proposals

The Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses (RCEI) seeks submissions for a special issue entitled “Toxic Tales: Narratives of Waste in Post-Industrial North America,” guest-edited by Begoña Simal-González (University of A Coruña), Sara Villamarín-Freire (University of A Coruña), and Elsa del Campo Ramírez (Nebrija University), to be published in spring 2023.

In the late 20th century, we have witnessed a “shift from a culture defined by its production to a culture defined by its waste,” as Cythia Deitering puts it, a development most visible in the US. On the other hand, even as garbage and toxicity have become more and more pervasive, the “slow violence” (Nixon) of the environmental degradation mandated by the global capitalist paradigm of growth has remained strangely slippery, difficult to grasp and reflect in artistic representations. It has thus become an urgent need to explore those narratives that not only attempt to capture the degradation of the environment, but also focus on those human communities that have become residual or waste(d). In this special number of RCEI we would like to pay attention to the “narratives of waste” produced in North America. A recent approach that can prove fruitful in such a pursuit is that of “Waste Theory,” a critical framework that allows scholars to grapple with the dire consequences that our globalized economy of waste has for both human beings and the entire planet. “Waste Theory” is largely indebted to philosophical theorizations of modernity, globalization and community (Agamben, Bauman, Hedges & Sacco, Marcuse, Mbembe, Nancy), but also to ecocritical schools of environmental justice (Adamson, Martínez Alier, Nixon), toxic discourse and waste studies (Buell, Deitering, Morrison, Phillips, Reno, Sullivan, Wallace).

Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

– Toxic landscapes and areas of waste
– Residual postmodernity in North American literature
– Environmental violence/slow violence in the age of globalization
– The natural/human scapegoat in a wasted neoliberal context
– Dirt theory and dystopian fiction
– Ecocritical perspectives on (un)altered landscapes
– Environmental health/justice in the context of global capitalism
– Marginal and residual communities in a liquid cartography
– Necropolitics and ecocriticism
– Formal aspects of contemporary discourses on waste (econarratology)

Potential contributors are reminded that a two-stage review process will be used. The first stage is based on the submission of detailed proposals from which a selection is made; contributors will then receive invitations to submit full essays for review. Questions and submissions should be sent to Sara (sara.vfreire@udc.es) or Elsa (ecampo@nebrija.es). More information about the project available at www.udc.es/grupos/cleu/lyg2EN.html.

Detailed proposals (800 to 1,000 words + bibliography), along with a short bio note (100 words), should be submitted by March 1, 2022.

Following review of the essay proposals by the editorial panel, selected authors are invited to submit full-length essays (6,000 to 7,000 words) for review. Full papers should be submitted by July 1, 2022.

PAPER SUBMISSIONS:

• Proposal submissions must be original and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
• Manuscripts will be written in English, and they should be approximately 6,000 to 7,000 words in length, inclusive of endnotes and Works Cited. Please format your work as a Word document with 2,5 cm margins on all sides. 12pt Times-Roman font is required for the body of the article and 10pt Times New Roman for notes and indented quotes. Use single space throughout the entire text of your paper. Indent the first line of each paragraph one inch (2,54 cm).
• All proposals must follow the Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition) guidelines, available on this link: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html; for in-text references and final reference list, follow the author-date system.
• Submissions will be peer-reviewed and final acceptance decisions will be based on relevance, quality, innovative content, and the originality of research approaches and results. Contributors’ name and affiliation do not appear in the text submitted. To safe-guard the double-blind peer review policy, contributors should send a separate note with name, affiliation and stating specifically the manuscript is only being considered for publication by Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses.

Posted on December 2, 2021