The Asia-Norway Environmental Storytelling (ANEST) Network and the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger invite proposals for the conference “Storytelling for Environmental Futures” to be held 7-9 August 2024 in Stavanger, Norway.
Storytelling is how humans make sense of the world. Storytelling binds together communities, and can tear them apart. Stories are not just linear tellings in time and space, but can also spiral, cycle, and create patterns. Stories can be told in words, visuals, and embodied experience. One of the main goals of storytelling is to recount an obstacle and how it can be overcome. Facing environmental challenges like climate change, extinction, pollution, and extractivism needs to take advantage of that kind of storytelling—and it is precisely the type of analysis that environmental humanities scholars can provide.
“Storytelling for Environmental Futures” wants to interrogate how storytelling about the future and in service of the future works. What are these environmental stories? Who is making these stories? Who is reading/hearing/encountering the stories? Why is this story being told? Who is carrying the stories?
This conference invites presentations that grapple with storytelling for environmental futures in all its forms, including ecocritical analysis of literature or film, environmental historical analysis of events or ideas, ecolinguistic analysis of discourse and text, new possibilities and theories for environmental storytelling, and ecocritical analysis of art works, among others. Proposals for whole sessions (paper panels as well as workshops) and individual papers are welcome.
This conference will offer opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, networking and professional development with a variety of sessions and events over three days. The conference will be free to attend, with lunches and the conference dinner on 9 August provided.
Deadline to apply is 15 January 2024. Notice of acceptance will be made by the end of January. Submit proposals at https://forms.gle/mFCvdyLMJumWn7yAA
Contact: Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities administrator, Greenhouse@uis.no
Organizers:
Asia-Norway Environmental Storytelling (ANEST) Network, a network of environmental humanities researchers in Norway, China, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong funded by the Research Council of Norway INTPART Program
Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities, a university-level center at the University of Stavanger with a strong portfolio of externally-funded projects in the environmental humanities
