Deadline: November 25, 2022
Contact: Said Mentak, University Mohammed I
Email: environmentalhumanitiesconfere@gmail.com
Phone: +212667716064

Most critics believe that the world has inherited nothing from the dominant capitalist culture save social and ecological crises. Poverty, racism, sexism and other forms of social inequality have spread all over the world and with that the natural world and animals are moving towards depletion and extinction. Unfortunately, social, economic and political institutions have naturalized exploitation of the human and the nonhuman world for material profits regardless of the abusive effects on the environment.
Therefore, it is not surprising that such abusive effects are being felt nowadays by conscientious intellectuals and the physical world alike. Ecofeminists, aware of the importance of women’s role in the protection of the natural world, have traced the patriarchal history and the use of reason to decry the irrational exploitation of nature by men patriarchal social structures. In this way, ecofeminists have also tackled the complicated factors that have led to our deplorable state of affairs: giving priority to women and nature, they question society, politics, economics, culture and religion. More than that, ecofeminists celebrate an eco-justice ethic that affirms that environmental and human rights are indivisible. They are in this sense on par with eco-justice scholars who support the poor in their plight to find a decent place to live in, where there will be clean water and healthy food, and where there will be no oppression or segregation. “Since we depend on one another for survival”, states Rita J. Turner (2015, xviii), “on other people, other species, and on the ecosystems around us,” justice for the oppressed means justice for the Earth in general.

The physical world is harshly reacting to humans’ infinite exploitation. The deadly strike of Covid-19 at the end of 2019 is but one example of the environment’s retribution and warning. The extinction of a large number of animals necessary to the balance of the Earth might signal the extinction of our race, too. Global warming and climate change are felt by the change in temperature and the spread of drought and lack of water in many countries. The world is out joint, so specialists from the physical and social sciences and the arts and humanities are called to join hands to alleviate the damage on Earth. Literature specifically should also have a say in this hoped-for collaboration since it helps “us, scientists and laypeople alike, to appreciate the meaning of our environmental quandaries” (emphasis in original; Scott Slovic, 2008, 147).

It follows, then, that in the absence of a healthy ecosystem, both humans and animals will suffer from different types of diseases that call for the medical expertise of many specialists who are aware of the ecological factor in the fragility of the biosphere. It is in this context that Ecological Health (known by EcoHealth) and the hybrid field recently labeled the “medical-environmental humanities” (Scott Slovic, Swarnalatha Rangarajan, and Vidya Sarveswaran, 2022) emerge as fields of research that focuse on the interrelation between the ecosystem and human or non-human health. It is hoped that EcoHealth and the medical-environmental humanities would be in a position to provide healthy alternatives to our polluted atmosphere and global warming.

We invite scholars from around the world to join the debate and ask questions that may include, but not necessarily limited to, the following:
• Whare are the relationships between the domination of human groups and the domination of nonhumans and the land?
• How does ecofeminism help us understand the historical justifications for the exploitation of nature and non-human animals?
• How have ecofeminists introduced new concepts for understanding the environment?
• How are patterns of domination that unjustly define people of color, women and the poor connected to the destruction of the natural world?
• How is education essential in promoting values of ecological justice?
• Can Ecological Health issues restore human trust in medical progress and the protection of nature?
• In what ways can EcoHealth and the medical-environmental humanities benefit from the Humanities to communicate its concerns about the ecosystem?
• How might literary creativity decelerate the destructive rush of technology?
• Will humanity have a healthy and secure future to succeed in avoiding the worst-case scenarios? (Marco Caracciolo, 2022)

Our keynote speakers this year will be the distinguished writers and scholars Scott Slovic, Tony Langois, and Nick Neely

Posted on October 20, 2022