Deadline: December 7, 2026
Contact: Melanie Woody Nguyen, Assistant Professor, Rollins College
Email: mwnguyen@rollins.edu

The visual arts have long been a site for both charting and challenging the relationship between human beings and their environments, and in the age of climate crisis, many contemporary artists confront this relationship with an increasing level of urgency. Their work employs artistic materials and approaches in the service of grappling with the overwhelming scale of the problem, mourning what has already been lost, and imagining potential scenarios in a time when the future feels fragile. We invite scholars and artists to participate in a roundtable discussion on the engagement of contemporary visual art (created since c. 1990) with the climate crisis. We heartily welcome presentations featuring artwork across media, including painting, sculpture, and photography, as well as land, performance, participatory, and installation art. Themes might include the following: the challenge of representing the immense “hyperobject” (Timothy Morton) of climate change, the suitability or unsuitability of realism (Amitav Ghosh), the desirability of practical political results, and the climate uncanny. We are particularly interested in presentations that engage with the conference theme of territory and terroir. Interested participants should submit an abstract (100-250 words) and a c.v. by December 7, 2026 to Melanie Woody Nguyen (mwnguyen@rollins.edu) and Joshua Shannon (shannon1@umd.edu).

Posted on October 30, 2026