Deadline: December 1, 2022
Contact: Kirsten Schuhmacher
Email: kschuhmacher@ucdavis.edu
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
In Sir Thomas Moore’s Utopia, his narrating character, Raphael Hythloday, uses the Utopian society to critique the expanding use of enclosures occurring in England during the beginning of the 16th century. Hythloday tells the Cardinal that “Your sheep…that commonly are so meek and eat so little; now, as I hear, they have become so greedy and fierce that they devour human beings themselves” (63). Hythloday’s commentary on sheep rebukes the injustices experienced by displaced English peoples due to enclosures. Moore’s observations enliven a debate regarding the use and preservation of the commons. Indeed, as we experience today, the commons are a place of contestation: Who is allowed to use them? What are they to be used for? How are commons claimed or reclaimed? And, crucially, must they always have an anthropocentric use? These questions are as old as the idea of “the commons.” This panel, then, seeks submissions that explore the relationship between the commons and pre-modern peoples. We are especially interested in papers that re/imagine what the commons are and can be used for in the pre-modern period. Scholars are also encouraged to explore the pre-modern ecological world as it has existed with and without “the human.”
Submissions are encouraged from a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to medieval and early modern literatures, textual studies, cultural and social histories, and visual cultures. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Imagining and reimagining as a form of reclamation
Long histories of the commons
Theories about space and spatial politics
Limits and liminalities
Borders and borderlands
Resource extractivism
The commons imaged as terrestrial, aquatic, and/or cosmic
Imagined and reimagined worlds
Medieval and early modern imagined futures
The ecological and colonial implications of European Commonwealths
Explorations of the relationship between the human and nonhuman
We welcome global, regional, and local approaches to the medieval and early modern periods, and we encourage proposals by BIPOC scholars, international scholars, and scholars at all stages of their careers.
Please send abstracts of 300 words and a short bio by December 1, 2022 by email to both:
kschuhmacher@ucdavis.edu – Kirsten Schuhmacher, University of California, Davis, Oecologies Advisory Council Member
maredovian@ucdavis.edu – Mikhaila Redovian, University of California, Davis, Oecologies Affiliate
*Please note that this panel will be entirely in-person without the option for virtual or hybrid conference talks.*
For more information regarding the Oecologies Research Cluster and its affiliated programing, see https://oecologies.com
Posted on October 7, 2022
