Rethinking Environmental Consciousness

Rethinking Environmental Consciousness

An International Research Symposium of the Environmental Humanities  

5-8 December 2014   

Mid Sweden University, Campus Sundsvall

• Registration and central conference venue: room 102 in house "O"
• Registration between 9 and 10 am on Friday, December 5

Program (PDF)
Researchers/Exhibitors and Their Contributions 

Rethinking Environmental Consciousness  is a four-day interdisciplinary research symposium at Mid Sweden University (MIUN) featuring keynote lectures from leading environmental humanities scholars, artists or writers as well as thematically organized paper sessions. All contributions are in English.

Thematic Framing

Rethinking Environmental Consciousness engages a number of provocative upheavals in and reassessments of the ways we think about ecologies, identities, communities, nationalities, borderlines, interactions, temporalities, spatiality, nostalgia, risks and agencies, to name some of the preoccupations that have driven new waves of scholarship, theory and criticism within the wider field of environmental humanities. Perhaps more than ever our awareness of the environment is in a state of flux. New concepts such as the Anthropocene not only denote a paradigmatic shift in humanity’s position vis-à-vis its environment, but also in its way of thinking about this position. The recent emergence onto the scene of critical perspectives such as the new materialisms, of which material ecocriticism has become an important strain, has already had substantial impacts on the ways in which relationships between people and environments are conceived. At the same time, the transnational modulation of the exchange of environmental thoughts and ideas has rarely been greater, suggesting that we are in a period of particular intensity, in which environmental consciousness is changing ever more complex ways; thus it seems especially pertinent and promising to initiate a fruitful series of cross-disciplinary conversations that may suggest renewed or innovative theorizations of what it means to be environmentally conscious in the world today, as well as in our shared pasts and common futures.

Three sub-themes

The contributions are contained and contextualized within the following three sub-themes:

1. Sub-theme 1 (The Anthropocene)
2. Sub-theme 2 (Material ecocriticism/s)
3. Sub-theme 3 (Transnational environmental consciousness)

Participants

This symposium showcases timely and original research of a high international standard from the full spectrum of the environmental humanities. A diverse group of scholars with research backgrounds in one or more of these sub-themes from more than 15 countries in Asia, Europe and North America will convene in Sundsvall.

Confirmed keynote speakers from the fields of ecocriticism, environmental history, political ecology and/or environmental art include:

• Ursula Heise (UCLA, Ecocriticism)
• Gísli Pálsson (University of Iceland, Environmental Anthropology)
• Kari Norgaard (University of Oregon, Environmental Sociology)
• Mark Luccarelli (University of Oslo, American Studies and the History of Environmental Thought)
• Sophia Perdikaris (CUNY, Environmental Archaeology)
• Richard Kerridge (Bath Spa University, Ecocriticism)

All sessions are free and open to the wider MIUN community. Interested students and staff are most welcome to audit the keynote lectures and paper sessions, which include contributions from MIUN research and teaching staff, and keynote lectures.

As a result of the symposium, a peer-reviewed anthology of scholarly articles for publication in the Rodopi series Studies in Environmental Humanities is expected to go to press in early 2016. The symposium is co-sponsored by ECOHUM, the Eco-Humanities Hub of Mid Sweden University and NIES, the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies.