Call for Submissions: Learning From and With Invasive Species

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Learning From and With Invasive Species

A NiCHE Series

Proposal Deadline: September 10, 2022

Draft Deadline: October 15/ongoing

Publication: Throughout fall 2022 and winter 2023


Over the past two weeks, we’ve published a short series on invasive species under the title Learning from and with Invasive Species: pluralities, refractions, futures . This series has explored some of the ways that humans choose to relate to species perceived to be “out-of-place” as shaped by ontologies, socioeconomic context, place-based histories, and desires of knowing and belonging to the world. By drawing attention to invasivity as historical production and the fickleness of its adoption, the series provided some discussions around invasion ecology and its relationship to the politics of land, labor, resources, selfhood, and place-making.

Eastern Grey Squirrel. Photo Courtesy of MarshBunny, Wikimedia Commons.

We’d like to continue this conversation through an ongoing series that engages with the same ideas, and might also take up some of what has been shared so far. To inspire furture contributions we provide the following prompts to ponder:

“Might scotch broom, understood away from steller fantasies of harmony, be part of these multispecies dialogues, contributing to futurities that do not reinforce narratives of settler naturalization? Might the plant be a part of unsettling futuries for the place, against settler desires for a particular “native” botanical pantheon”

C. Sandilands, “Loving the Difficult: Scotch Broom”, 2022.

“We understand invasion as a relational process in which many different lives—human and nonhuman— are embedded together.”

Jennifer Atchison and Lesley Head. “Eradicating bodies in invasive plant management.” 2013

“We argue that invasivity is not a neutral observation of nature’s organic borders, but an enforcement of colonial and national logics on nonconforming bodies and lands.”

Rebekah Sinclair and Anna Pringle. “Guests, Pests, or Terrorists? Speciesed Ethics and the Colonial Intelligibility of ‘Invasive’Others.” 2017
Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Photo courtesy of Ryan Hodnett, Wikimedia Commons.

We seek proposals for Learning From and With Invasives that:

  • Interrogate or investigate ideas of invasivity
  • Respond to the pieces published so far
  • Are in written in English or French.

Learning From and With Invasives will feature:

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

Learning From and With Invasives 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 100-350 word proposal describing your proposed submission, how it engages with 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 September 20, 2022.

Applicants will alerted of their submission status by September 20, 2022. Please email Estraven Lupino-Smith, lupino [@] uvic.ca, 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.


Bibliography

Atchison, Jennifer, and Lesley Head. “Eradicating bodies in invasive plant management.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31, no. 6 (2013): 951-968.

Sandilands, Catriona. “Loving the Difficult: Scotch Broom.” In Kin, pp. 33-52. Duke University Press, 2022.

Sinclair, Rebekah, and Anna Pringle. “Guests, Pests, or Terrorists? Speciesed Ethics and the Colonial Intelligibility of ‘Invasive’Others.” The ethics and rhetoric of invasion ecology (2017): 31-60.


Featured Image: Cytisus scoparius, Scotch Broom. Courtesy of Eric Coombs, Oregon Department of Agriculture.
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Estraven Lupino-Smith is an artist, researcher, and educator living on unceded Lkwungen and and W̱SÁNEĆ territories. They are currently pursuing a PhD in Geography at the University of British Columbia. Their work is informed by their curiosity and critical engagements with various environments: natural, cultural, and constructed. They are interested in the interactions of human and non-human animals and interrupting dominant narratives about nature and ecologies.

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