Call for Submissions: Succession II: Queering the Environment

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Succession II: Queering the Environment

A NiCHE Series

Proposal Deadline: April 15, 2022

Draft Deadline: May 23, 2022

Series Publication: June 2022

In ecology, succession is a series of progressive changes made in a community over time. These changes often lead to higher diversity in an environment.

In June 2020, we published Succession: Queering the Environment, a series that explored the changes that occur within environmental history and related environmental studies when queer people, non-humans, systems, and ideas are centred.

Explore Succession I

We are thrilled to invite submissions for Succession II: Queering the Environment. Series editors Addie Hopes, Estraven Lupino-Smith, and Jessica DeWitt ask Succession II contributors to reflect on at least one of the following prompts and corresponding passages:

  • Prompt #1: On Unruliness: “How can queer environmental histories, environmental humanities, and queer ecology embrace the wild and disorderly?”

“We need a way to register those bodies that congregate or disperse around the boundaries of a history of sexuality that has named names and made order out of chaos, and in so doing we will not simply be locating subjugated figures or celebrating a naughty and subversive set of nonconformists; rather, we will also be engaging disorderly forms of history, desires that lie beyond the consensus terms of their eras. While the arc of modern queer histories has bent toward legibility, recognition, maturity, and mutuality, wild bodies plot a different course through history and appear only at the very edge of definition, flickering in and out of meaning and sense and tending toward bewilderment. Bewilderment, furthermore, as a form of lostness and unknowing, is not a politically charged statement about being and knowing; it is simply the space rendered by the absence of meaning and direction” (Jack Halberstam, Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire, 14)

  • Prompt #2: On Care: “How does queering environmental history and humanities scholarship unveil past instances of interspecies and non-anthropocentric ways of caring? How does queer ecology break down gendered barriers to care for one another and help us move toward a more caring biocentric future?”

“All masculinities have infinite capacities to care, which can be expressed towards Earth, human others and ourselves — simultaneously.” (Martin Hultman and Paul M. Pulé, Ecological Masculities: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Guidance, 31)

 “We conclude that climate change denialism epitomises white male effect, providing us with a destructive example of the convergent mechanisms of race, power and resource exploitation that have asserted white men’s primacy precisely because malestream norms persist and shape some men’s values and actions in overtly uncaring directions.”  (Hultman and Pulé, 22)

  • Prompt #3: On Pleasure: “How does queer ecology help us understand and embrace pleasure, and the intersection of pleasure with the natural world? How has a societal obsession with controlling and determining ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ pleasures affected human sexuality? How does looking at the past through a queer lens with a mind to pleasure change our understanding of history and historical processes?

“We… have to stop demonizing pleasure. We try to leverage control over the natural world by making our emotions and sensations less reliable than our thoughts, and then burn at the stake anyone who stays attuned to the ways and power of pleasure in the natural world. It’s counter productive.” (adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, 33).

We seek proposals for Succession II that:

  • Respond to or incorporate at least one of the above prompts and passages (Unruliness, Care, Pleasure).
  • Feature LGBTQIA2S+ folks interacting with and thinking about the environment and non-human animals in the past and present.
  • Reimagine environmental topics using queer theory or a related queer lens.
  • Are in written in English or French.

Succession II will feature:

  • Environmental History
  • Environmental Humanities
  • Environmental Art
  • Queer Ecology
  • Related Disciplines

Succession II submissions can take the form of:

  • Blog posts (800-1200 words)
  • Creative Fiction or Non-Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Photo Essays
  • Audio and Visual Projects
  • Other forms of expression and writing

Submit a 100-300 word proposal describing your proposed submission, how it incorporates or relates to the above passages, and its contribution to the field of environmental history/studies more broadly, as well as a short bio using the Google Form below by April 15, 2022.

Applicants will alerted of their submission status by April 22, 2022. Please email Jessica DeWitt, jessicamariedewitt@gmail.com, with any questions or other inquiries.

NiCHE offers $100 CAD honoraria to contributors without adequate or consistent access to institutional support. Learn more about our honoraria policy here.

Feature Image: “IMG_3206” by andydr is marked with CC BY 2.0.
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Jessica DeWitt

is an environmental historian of Canada and the United States, editor, and digital communications strategist. She earned her PhD in History from the University of Saskatchewan in 2019. She is an executive member, editor-in-chief, and social media editor for the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). She is also a working board member of the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society and Girls Rock Saskatoon. A passionate social justice advocate, she focuses on developing digital techniques and communications that bridge the divide between academia and the general public in order to democratize knowledge access. You can find out more about her and her freelance services at jessicamdewitt.com.

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