Call For Articles : Special Issue “World Mythology and Ecocriticism: Remembering Nature as a Sacred Teacher”-Rachel McCoppin - Humanities Journal

Special Issue “World Mythology and Ecocriticism: Remembering Nature as a Sacred Teacher”

A special issue of Humanities.

This Special Issue focuses specifically on the role that nature plays within world mythology. The environment undoubtedly played a crucial role in developing the mythological narratives of many cultures throughout the globe. Many cultures regarded nature as sacred, envisioning aspects of the environment, being directly related to divine beings, sacred forces, teachers, etc. Often, cultures imagined that the representatives of nature needed to be appeased in order to gain harmony with their environments. Many cultures also used their mythology to connect nature to the lives of human beings—connecting the cycle of the seasons to the life cycle of humans for instance. Identifying humans as inextricably connected with the natural world allowed a myriad of cultures to find meaning in their own lives, as nature in myth was often portrayed as a teacher, guide, source of inspiration, etc., for the characters within the myth, as well as the audiences of the myth. As civilizations grew and developed, often the mythological references to the importance of nature as something sacred diminished, but some mythic texts still imparted messages that strove to maintain reverence for the environment. Given the contemporary environmental crisis, it is important to look back on the texts that were once sacred to a people, in order to remember the great value of finding our own reverence in the natural world.

This Special Issue is particularly interested in receiving articles that discuss global mythological texts from an ecocritical lens. Articles that examine myths that connect natural occurrences to the lives of humans—looking at age from the standpoint of seasonal change, accepting death as a natural occurrence, etc., are especially desirable. Additionally, texts that present nature as a divine being, sacred embodiment, source of inspiration, source of contention, etc., are welcomed. Articles that focus on global creation myths, myths that present nature as divine, myths of humans contending with nature, either through marriage to a natural element, battling with a natural representative, or even becoming a natural element, are all highly desirable. Additionally, myths that mark a time of transition of values in the portrayal of the environment, such as the progression from hunter/gatherer methods to agricultural methods, or the destruction of the environment as technology advanced, are desired. Finally, myths that focus upon the heroic journey, casting the protagonist as a personification of nature, or showing the protagonist as failing or succeeding upon his or her quest because of nature, are especially sought after. This Special Issue is interested in mythic texts from around the world, from any era.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords:

World Mythology

Ecocriticism

Mythic Studies

Environmental Studies

Hero’s Journey/Quest

This special issue is now open for submission.

deadline for submissions: December 10, 2024

contact email: mccoppin@umn.edu

CFP: Special Issue Call for Papers 'The Human and the Machine: AI and the Changing World'-2024

If we are to believe the entertainment media, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is destined to go rogue and take over the world, destroying humanity as we know it. In reality, the growing accessibility of AI is seeing its use normalised and it is becoming a useful tool to improve and alter society. Artificial Intelligence has been an area of research since the 1950s and hinges on machine functions that learn from humans or independently. Despite its long history, contemporary advancements in AI systems, like Midjourney and Chat GPT, are fuelling fresh discussions about its pervasive impact on diverse industries, from healthcare and communication to engineering and art.

Existing research has documented AI's capabilities in various sectors. It can synthesise big data, enhance creativity, streamline production, and personalise content. For instance, platforms like Chat GPT have proven effective in educational settings, while DALL-E 2 has expedited the creation and deployment of advertising materials. In the business domain, data analysts leverage AI for consumer behaviour analysis, including product reviews and purchase intentions. For public relations professionals, AI automates routine tasks like media list creation and meeting scheduling, thereby enhancing efficiency. Overall, AI has wide applicability across industries with obvious advantages.

However, AI is not without its challenges. It has been critiqued for potentially causing job losses, breaching privacy, infringing copyrights, and perpetuating false information. There's a growing concern that as machines take on roles in cultural production, even when working alongside their human counterparts, issues around human agency and rights come into focus, particularly when AI systems are perceived as biased or lacking a nuanced understanding of global contexts. For instance, in journalism, concerns have been raised that using AI will compromise norms and values, while in advertising and public relations, the move to using virtual influencers has posed issues of inauthenticity. Such ethical concerns continue to be raised around professional practice and the use of AI, and therefore, pose challenges to the willingness of people to embrace AI.

While the public's response to AI has often been tepid due to its complexities and uncertainties, its undeniable influence on language and social relationships underscores its relevance in communication research. It is against this backdrop we extend an invitation for contributions to this special issue that considers the relationship between artificial intelligence and communication. The focus is on how AI is influencing the communication and media industries, ranging from public relations and journalism to marketing and entertainment media (e.g. screen production, artistic practice, podcasting). We aim to address questions such as, how is AI impacting the production and consumption of media content, how might AI shape communication and culture, is AI displacing human resources, and what impact will AI have on authentic human interaction.

Topics in the special issue may include (but are not limited to):

• AI and authentic human interaction

• AI and journalism/public relations/advertising/marketing (or other communication industry)

• AI and personalization of media content

• Chatbots and virtual humans

• AI and cultural development

• AI, diversity, and inclusion

• AI media production and/or consumption practices

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Publication Timeline

29 January 2024, abstracts due (200-300 words)

22 April 2024, full manuscripts due (6-7000 words)

Publication: October 2024

Please send submissions and correspondence to: co-editors Matthew Guinibert (matt.guinibert@aut.ac.nz) and Angelique Nairn (angelique.nairn@aut.ac.nz) with the subject ‘ICC-X’. 

Please visit Intellect’s website www.intellectbooks.com/journal-editors-and-contributors to follow its house referencing guidelines.

About the co-editors:

Dr Matthew Guinibert is a senior lecturer and Head of Department (Brand, Digital Communication, and Public Relations) in in the School of Communication Studies (SCS). His expertise in digital media spans visual communication, UI/UX design, technology-enhanced learning, and the strategies that underpin the use of digital media.

Dr Angelique Nairn is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies (SCS). She is also the Associate Head of School for Research. Angelique has been involved in a myriad of research projects that have hinged on organisational communication, identity construction, rhetoric, and/or the creative industries. She teaches courses in the public relations department, specialising in digital public relations and persuasion.

https://www.intellectbooks.com/interactions-studies-in-communication-culture

angelique.nairn@aut.ac.nz

Call For Papers for Edited Volume on: Altered #Animals: #Posthumanism and Technology in 20th and 21st Century #Discourse and Narratives-#Routledge Series

According to Descartes’ views of animals, animals are to be perceived as “automata” and “void of reason” (Discourse on the Method). As he explains, “were there such machines exactly resembling organs and outward form an ape or any other irrational animal, we could have no means of knowing that they were in any respect of a different nature from these animals” (Discourse on the Method). Contemporary animal studies scholars have moved past this outdated approach, instead accepting that animals exhibit cognition, sentience, emotion, and a myriad of demonstrations of intelligence.

Yet, with the rapid development of advanced technologies in the 20th and 21st centuries, we have seen scientists experiment with animal bodies, genes, and minds – in some ways, treating them as the machines that Descartes suggested they essentially are. In medicine, these altered animals include those used as research models like the OncoMouse, and animals that have been genetically modified for organ transplantation. Animals have also been altered for environmental purposes, including in agriculture, such as the Enviropig, and conservation, such as black-footed ferrets. These medical and environmental dimensions intersect in animals like the mosquitoes in Oxitec’s Friendly Aedes Program, which have been genetically modified to limit population size and prevent disease transmission. The use of technology to alter animals has not been limited to medical, agricultural, and environmental applications, either: other examples include Dolly the cloned sheep, Alba the genetically engineered “glowing” rabbit, and the RoboRoach, a wirelessly remote-controlled cockroach.

This edited collection, tentatively titled Altered Animals: Posthumanism and Technology in 20th and 21st Century Discourse and Narratives, will explore posthumanist theorizations of animals that have been altered using technology. In this contemporary moment, these posthumanist theorizations are possible when, in the words of Rosi Braidotti, we consider what “bio-technologically mediated bodies are capable of doing” (The Posthuman 61). Drawing attention to the interconnections between the studies of animals and technology, this collection seeks posthumanist explorations of what we refer to as “altered animals.” We use this term to refer to a nonhuman animal that has been engineered, manipulated, or altered through various advanced technological practices. In particular, this collection is focused on a few key questions: how the identity of these altered animals is constructed, how these alterations impact the relationships between humans and nonhuman animals, and how depictions of altered animals engage with posthumanism to explore the perspectives of these animals. As Donna Haraway observes in her seminal “A Cyborg Manifesto,” we cannot simply view the machine-organism hybrid in essentialist terms, since “the machine and the organism are each communication systems joined in a symbiosis that transforms both” (180). How are we to view these transformations? How do these transformations not only affect both, but also play a role in human lives?

Both animals and machines/technology are traditionally seen as separate from humanist constructions regarding the human condition. Therefore, intermingling the two can easily lead to feelings of fear, horror, or repulsion. These new animals are frequently categorized as monstrous or unnatural and therefore deserving of fewer ethical protections. In his discussion of the ethics around biotechnologically altered animals, Mickey Gjerris argues that since the “naturalness” of these animals is often raised in conversations about ethics, it “begs the question why the ‘natural’ automatically should [be seen as] more ethical than the ‘unnatural.’” (“Animal Biotechnology: The Ethical Landscape” 62) In this collection, we hope to consider this question in relation to depictions of technologically altered animals: how does technology impact the identity of these animals? How can literature, film, television, and other types of media ethically draw attention to the identity and experiences of altered animals?

A second key question this edited collection seeks to address is the way that technology is changing our relationships with nonhuman animals. Nola M. Ries asks “[f]or any human health gains we achieve through genetically altering animals for our purposes, do we lose something of our relationship with animals and take another step down a slope that becomes more slippery with each new manipulation of them?” (“Human Health Care: The Promise of Animal Biotechnology” 171). While Ries is describing genetically altered animals in medical contexts, this question can be extended to other technological alterations and applications. Is it the case that the relationships between humans and animals are being progressively eroded the more that animals are altered? Can posthuman theory help us to reconfigure our relationships with these altered animals? And how can depictions of altered animals help us to navigate the complexities of these relationships?

Posthuman theorists have highlighted the role that literature, art, and culture can play in how we perceive nonhuman beings. In Pramod K. Nayar’s discussion of the connections between critical posthumanism and critical animal studies, he notes the importance of depictions of nonhuman animals, since “[s]pecies borders and our perceptions of (the materiality of) animal and non-human others are increasingly mediated by narratives and representations” (Posthumanism 113). How do literary, artistic, film, and other depictions of altered animals influence our understandings of the animals created through technological practices? What unique approaches have been taken in depicting these animals?

We seek proposals for chapters that investigate the way that literature (of any genre/ medium), film and television, popular culture, art, and other media explore the intersecting technological and cultural factors that influence nonhuman animal identity. Chapters can explore 20th or 21st century depictions, and, when possible, should draw connections to current issues regarding existing altered animals. Some examples of altered animals for consideration may include:

“Robo-animals” or animals that have been “cyborg-ized” with cybernetic/robotic bodily attachments or enhancements

Laboratory animals that have been used as test subjects in medical and scientific experiments

Animals that have been genetically altered for agricultural purposes

Human-animal hybrids and chimeras

Cloned and genetically engineered/modified animals

Animals and computers, brain implants, and/or artificial intelligence

Animals whose cells have been preserved using cryopreservation and biobanking

Animals that have been used to produce medical materials and products, such as pharmaceuticals

Speculative/hypothetical examples of altered animals with no tangible real-world counterpart (yet)

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Please send chapter proposals of 300-500 words, a biographical note including institutional affiliation (if any) of 150-200 words, and a bibliography with a minimum of 5 sources to alteredanimals@gmail.com by January 31st. We intend to notify accepted authors by February 23rd.

We intend to propose the edited collection as part of Routledge’s “Perspectives on the Nonhuman in Literature and Culture” series; the managing editor has expressed interest in seeing the proposal. We expect full-length chapters of roughly 7000 words to be due by September 2024. Thanks!

Monica Sousa and Jerika Sanderson

alteredanimals@gmail.com

CFP: Virtual International Conference on "Narrating Lives"- Storytelling, (Auto)Biography and (Auto)Ethnography: Rome- May 2024.

Life-history approach occupies the central place in conducting and producing (auto)biographical and (auto)ethnographic studies through the understanding of self, other, and culture. We construct and develop conceptions and practices by engaging with memory through narrative, in order to negotiate ambivalences and uncertainties of the world and to represent (often traumatic) experiences.

The “Narrating Lives” conference will focus on reading and interpreting (auto)biographical texts and methods across the humanities, social sciences, and visual and performing arts. It will analyse theoretical and practical approaches to life writing and the components of (auto)biographical acts, including memory, experience, identity, embodiment, space, and agency. We will attempt to identify key concerns and considerations that led to the development of the methods and to outline the purposes and ethics of (auto)biographical and (auto)ethnographic research.

We aim to explore a variety of techniques for gathering data on the self-from diaries to interviews to social media and to promote understanding of multicultural others, qualitative inquiry, and narrative writing.

Conference panels will be related, but not limited, to:

• Life Narrative in Historical Perspective
• Qualitative Research Methods
• Oral History, Memory and Written Tradition
• Journalism and Literary Studies
• Creative Writing and Performing Arts
• (Auto)Biographical Element in Film Studies, Media and Communication
• Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy
• Narrative Medicine
• Storytelling in Education
• Ethics and Politics of Research

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Submissions may be proposed in various formats, including:

Individually submitted papers (organised into panels by the committee)

Panels (3-4 individual papers)

Posters

Proposals should be sent to: life-history@lcir.co.uk.

Deadline for Abstracts: March 01, 2024.

https://life-history.lcir.co.uk

life-history@lcir.co.uk

Dr. Elena Nistor

Call for Papers: Narratives of Land: Place, Space, and Human Identity- January 2024

The land is always stalking people. The land makes people live right. The land looks after us. The land looks after people.

– Mrs Annie Peaches, a 77-year-old member of the Western Apache community of Cibecue (Basso 2000: 41)

A narrative is an orally or verbally disseminated account that captures events, attaches meanings to them, and configures the world around us. So, when we propose “Narratives of Land”, the first query that confronts us is – is it at all possible for a land to speak or communicate? Does land possess any agential faculty to affect us? Is a land always mute or it speaks through its materiality?

There is a sense of co-existential and affective interconnectivity between land and humans regarding our empirical perceptions of it. These multi-sensorial faculties shape or orient human identities, our perceptions, and our sociocultural lifeworlds and also redefine the land itself. David Manuel Navarrete and Michael Redclift, in “The Role of Place in the Margins of Space” have talked of the “human dimension of spatiality” (3). In their theorization, place or land is not static or an inert actor instead it is a living entity with a degree of dynamism, fluidity, and changeability. The materialities of any place confer a sense of belongingness, and rootedness to its people.

South Asia is a colonial cartographic construct that has its own regional diversities, histories, and memories. South Asia is a space where the interaction or ‘intra-action’ between land and human has long been the crux for critical inquiry. Land as a geographical entity has long been discussed by geographers, historians, geologists, ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and so on. It has also been the subject of poets, novelists, and also literary critics for many generations. So, to talk about land is to dive into the ocean of multiplicity where there is no terminal point rather any juncture here is a point of departure. The human mind as an isolated entity distinct from its environment since, in the words of Robert Pepperell “a human cannot be separated from its supportive environment … it seems the human is a ‘fuzzy edged’ entity that is profoundly dependent into its surroundings, much as the brain is dependent on the body” (Pepperell 20).

Every human being has their own way of communicating with the land. A diasporic subject often sees the land as not only a physical entity but a ‘topophilic bond’ that transcends the physicality of land. Yi Fu Tuan has used the term “topophilia” (1990) to suggest a sense of attachment or a feeling-link between people and place. Land can be seen as an open ground of action, being and becoming. A land can be a political construct as well. During the partition of India land becomes a defining category of human existence. The sense of belonging to a land informs one’s social, political, and cultural identity. Even, in this age of Anthropocene and Capitalocene, the mutilation and commodification of South Asia has been interrogated by different environmental theorists. Even a post-apocalyptic or a post-war land also speaks a different narrative which is yet to be heard. All these implications can be made to subscribe to the idea of indigeneity.

The conference intends to engage with these multiple concerns emerging out of the land of South Asia. The conference is going to be an interdisciplinary space for scholars of all disciplines to showcase indigeneity contained within the narratives of the land. So, to convey thoughts in language, the conference is ready to set an epistemic dialogue with the land and bring forth an alternative domain of critical explorations.

Abstracts are invited but not limited to the following sub topics/themes:

· Environmental Studies

· Diaspora

· Border Studies

· Human Geography

· Posthuman Studies

· Narratives of War

· Space/Place

· Migration

· Indigenous Epistemes

Abstract Submission: On or before 16th November, 2023

Acceptance of abstract: By 30th November, 2023

Full paper submission: On or before 3rd January, 2024

Seminar dates: 10 th and 11 th January 2024

Seminar will in-person but owing to enough overseas candidates, we'll try to arrange an online session if/when necessary

Send your abstracts to narrativesofland@gmail.com

For further details contract narrativesofland@gmail.com

Send in abstracts of around 300 words along with a bio note of 150 words to the above mail id.

Registration details will be communicated in due course.