Call for Papers Issue 10 (August 2024)—CLOSED

EcoGothic and the Anthropocene: Dialogues on Representations of the Natural World in Gothic Literature within a Climate Crisis Context

 

 

Guest editor: Dr Antonio Alcalá González (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM)

 

Ecocriticism had its origins in the last decade of the previous century. This new interdisciplinary approach was articulated to study the relationships between culture, environment and literature. One of the critical sources that became a central reference for those invested in the topic was The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology (1996), edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm.

 

Over the years, ecocriticism was consolidated by the contributions of researchers from varied disciplinary and linguistic backgrounds, underscoring the intersectionality in both methodologies and objects of study. Feminist ecocriticism is an example of this, as is the branch of Gothic studies of our concern here: the EcoGothic. For Andrew Smith and William Hughes, editors of EcoGothic (2013), there are important coincidences between images of environmental catastrophes explored by ecocriticism and the representations of the natural world (often linked to the uncanny) or of postapocalyptic scenarios which comprise, at least in some measure, a certain type of Gothic literature. In the introduction to their volume, Smith and Hughes state that the origins of an ecologically conscious Gothic may be traced back to the Romantic period, when both Romantic and Gothic literature shared a critical language. However, their approach to nature is not the same since, for the Gothic, nature is a term that “appears to participate in a language of estrangement rather than belonging” (2). Moreover, in The Forest and the EcoGothic (2020), Elizabeth Paker defines the latter as a mode of writing “through which we can examine our darker, more complicated cultural representations of the nonhuman world—which are all the more relevant in times of ecological crisis” (36).

 

This context of crisis chronologically coincides with an era that several scholars have called the Anthropocene: a geological designation coined to describe a period in Earth’s history that began almost three hundred years ago with the Industrial Revolution and that is characterized by a dramatic increase in the impact of human activity on the ecological balance of Earth’s atmosphere. Human beings have actively participated in a process of planetary transformation that has taken place as a consequence of the use of technology to shape nature according to our needs. Nonetheless, whenever pandemics, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters strike, we are left with no other choice but confinement and, many times, the adoption of a merely observant attitude in the face of the collapse of our frequently inefficient defenses against the manifestations of an unbalanced nature. For almost three hundred years, Gothic literature has reminded us that we are not in control when the forces of the natural world collide with our assumed superiority in the orb.

 

Thus, for the 10 th issue of Nuevas Poligrafías. Revista de Teoría Literaria y Literatura Comparada, we invite specialists in the fields of literature, arts and the humanities to submit original and unpublished articles that engage in a dialogue between EcoGothic literature and the Anthropocene. Some of the  suggested themes are the following:

 

• EcoGothic: Romantic vs Gothic approaches to the representations of the natural world
• EcoHorror and the exploration of climate crisis anxieties
• PlantHorror: The monstrous vegetal in art
• EcoGothic and Animal Studies
• Donna Haraway’s concept of “companion species” and Anthropocene Gothic
• Horror of contagion
• Pandemics and its aftermath in Gothic literature and art
• A dark ecology of the forest in Anthropocene Gothic
• Nautical Gothic and its relation to environmental concerns
• Monsters and a blurring of the distinction between human and other-than-human in Gothic aesthetics
• Eco-disaster cinema
• The Anthropocene perspective in Gothic: A dialogue with postcolonial and neocolonial studies
• The transformative potential of Anthropocene Gothic

 

We will continue to receive contributions on our other familiar topics ‒that is, on studies of literary theory and literature in different languages, genre, gender, images, themes and historical settings, popular culture and postcolonial studies, as well as transmedial approaches. We will also welcome book reviews related to comparative literature and literary theory.

 

The length of the articles proposed should be between 5000 and 7000 words, including notes and bibliographical references. The length of the reviews should be between 1000 words and 1500 words. All contributions must adhere to the general requirements and editorial guidelines established by the journal, and they should be submitted through the editorial manager of this website. Although we receive contributions all year round, the deadline for papers to be included in the 10th issue is 12 February 2024. The publication of issue 10 of the journal is scheduled for August 2024.