Under Western Skies 2014: Intersections of Environments, Technologies, and Communities

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Event Details

Deadline: Jan 10 2014
Event Date: Sep 9 2014 – Sep 13 2014
Event Website: Event Webpage
City: Mount Royal University, Calgary
Country: Canada
Primary Contact Name: Liam Haggarty
Contact Email: lhaggarty@mtroyal.ca

Under Western Skies is a biennial, interdisciplinary conference on the environment. The third conference welcomes academics from across the disciplines as well as members of artistic and activist communities, non- and for-profit organizations, government, labour, and NGOs to address collectively the environmental challenges faced by human and nonhuman actors.

The conference is held on the Mount Royal University campus (Calgary, Alberta, CANADA) in the LEED Gold-certified Roderick Mah Centre for Continuous Learning.

Keynote speakers for the 2014 conference include:

This is a call for contributions from all environmental fields of inquiry and endeavor, including the humanities, natural and social sciences, public policy, business, and law. Artistic, creative, and non-academic proposals are also welcome. Possible directions may include, but are not limited to

  • agriculture, food, and food security
  • alpine and glacial change
  • animal rights and commodification
  • architecture and design
  • automobility/transportation/infrastructure
  • borders and transnational issues
  • climate shock
  • collaboration between scientific and non-scientific communities
  • continental “perimeter security”
  • community health
  • determinants of health
  • direct action and activism
  • ecology economics
  • ecosystem services
  • ecocriticism
  • ecocinema/ecomedia
  • “ecoterrorism”
  • environmental catastrophe and community
  • environmental colonialism
  • environmental devastation as neo-colonialism
  • environmental economies
  • environmental humanities
  • environmental racism and justice
  • environmental technologies
  • feedlots and runoff
  • fisheries and oceans
  • forests and forestry
  • fracking
  • geoengineering
  • Global Great Lakes
  • historical perspectives
  • human and nonhuman migration
  • indigenous environmental kinship
  • indigenous land, air, and water rights
  • indigenous worldviews and sovereignties
  • interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity
  • invasive species
  • the Keystone and XL Pipelines and continental integration
  • law and public policy
  • prose and poetry
  • marine ecosystems
  • nanotechnology and the environment
  • national and regional Parks
  • new continental weather patterns
  • nuclear culture and power after Fukushima
  • oil culture
  • oil/tar sands
  • politics of meat
  • resilience
  • restoration, reclamation, reparation
  • resurrection of species
  • the rights of nature
  • seeds and seed patents
  • senses of place
  • technology as social construction
  • tourism and amenity migration
  • urban wilding and wilderness
  • water rights, watersheds, and water ecosystems
  • weather patterns
  • wildlife and animality
  • women’s, gender and/or sexuality studies
  • youth, education, and activism

A selection of papers will go forward for an edited book publication following UWS 2014. The collection of edited papers stemming from UWS 2010 is forthcoming from Wilfrid Laurier University Press as a part of its Environmental Humanities Series (http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/press/Catalog/boschman.shtml).

UWS 2014 conference proposals/abstracts should run no more than 250 words in length and be attached to an email as a .doc or .docx file. Proposals for papers, readings, panels, screenings, displays, and workshops are welcome.

Direct all proposals, together with brief bio and contact information, to Liam Haggarty:lhaggarty@mtroyal.ca
Closing Date: January 10, 2014

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