Deadline: Dec. 1
Contact: Sreya Ann Oommen and Jada Ach, Arizona State University
Email: soommen1@asu.edu

This is a panel CFP for the 2025 Biennial Conference: Collective Atmospheres, to be held July 8-11, 2025, at the University of Maryland.

This panel seeks to build a collective atmosphere for island and desert studies, a space where desert(/)islands can share the same critical air. Islands have historically had the lure as paradisal spaces, and this has led to their often complicated and complex colonial histories. Meanwhile, global desert environments have frequently been represented as vast, unpeopled wastelands; such depictions risk perpetuating Indigenous erasure and environmental harm. We welcome proposals that either integrate insights from desert and island studies or examine one of these ecocritical subfields individually. The goal of this discussion is to build theoretical and critical relationships between island and desert humanists so that we can broaden and strengthen our environmental justice work.

Here are some questions to consider: How do you locate islands and/or deserts within decoloniality? How do these environments assume strategic significance in global geopolitics? How are islands(/)deserts sites of neocolonialism today, and how does literature born from these environments challenge (neo)colonial thought? How do these spaces and communities become significant in the Anthropocene, especially since both islands and deserts are disproportionately affected by the horrors of climate change? Are there particular themes, aesthetics, or forms that unite desert(/)island art and literature? What are the ethical throughlines? What would an island(/)desert humanities look like, and what kinds of coalitions or communities might it make possible?

Please submit proposals of 200-300 words to Sreya Ann Oommen (soommen1@asu.edu) and Jada Ach (jada.ach@asu.edu) by Dec. 1, 2024.

Posted on October 14, 2024