Environment and Ecocriticism (Lois McFarland)
This panel welcomes papers that respond to the conference theme of ‘dis-ruptures’ in relation to the environment, climate emergency, ecocriticism, landscape, and heritage across multiple disciplines. It will reflect on ways in which creative works within the arts and humanities address the environmental, social and spiritual ruptures produced by the Anthropocene, as well as attempts to disrupt or interrupt these. Contributors may wish to address interconnected systems of ecological and societal exploitation, the planet’s changing landscapes, the formation of kinships with the ‘other’, or how ecocritical thinkers and creatives across global religions and cultures have challenged (or indeed reinforced) certain myths and their legacies that have shaped our relationship with the natural world.
Papers may range in scope from the global to the local, and contributors are invited to respond to the themes raised above or to the following further topics:
- The rise of climate fiction (cli-fi) in literature, tv and film: its concerns, themes, connections with and departures from other speculative genres.
- Creative works (poetry, nature writing, film, music) that explore embodied/affective contact with nature. The emotional, ethical, sensory and spiritual responses these evoke.
- Postcolonial critiques of the slow rise of environmental alarm within the global north, when climate change has been a reality in the global south for far longer. Discussions on climate justice and social justice where these intersect.
- Ecologically conscious communities (fictional or otherwise): their philosophical and ethical underpinnings; their attempts to de-centre the human and form novel kinships; their successes and failures.
- Works from global and indigenous traditions that conceive of nature through integrative, animist, or non-dualistic modalities. Interactions with these from ecofeminist, queer, post- or decolonial ecological perspectives.
- Artists, activists, writers, scientists, environmental philosophers and theologians resisting received interpretations of apocalypse, in which catastrophe is inevitable and only a select few (humans) may be rescued.
- How creative and scholarly disciplines convey nature as operating in space and deep time beyond human scale and understanding, from the macro to the micro. The need to slow down and notice, or indeed accept the unknowability of ecosystems, while still responding with urgency to climate change.
- Expressions of ecological grief, solastalgia or hope in response to changing landscapes due to rising sea levels, erosion, drought, deforestation, biodiversity loss, etc.
- Rewilding and heritage projects that respond to the above phenomena worldwide (a focus on Scotland is especially welcome for Stirling 2026)
Queries and abstract proposals of no more than 350 words should be sent to Lois McFarland (University of Edinburgh) at Lois.McFarland@ed.ac.uk no later than 31st January, 2026.
