The 2024 GAPS Conference provides an opportunity to engage with the multiple intersections of colonial and environmental histories, presents, and futures, and to work towards new ways of bridging postcolonial and environmental studies. Papers will discuss cultural representations of human-environment relations in colonial, anti‐colonial, neo‐colonial, decolonial, and Indigenous contexts, addressing questions such as the following:
- How do literary texts and other forms of cultural production reflect, comment on, theorize, or critique colonial and neo‐colonial incursions into the lands of others, as well as their ecological repercussions?
- How do they reinforce or counteract hegemonic ways of knowing the environment, and what alternatives do they offer? What connections do they draw between past and present forms of environmental oppression and exploitation, and how do they envision (im)possible futures?
- How do Indigenous narratives in different media imagine the relational co‐existence of humans and more‐than‐human entities?
- What spatialities and temporalities do environmental imaginaries and critiques from postcolonial and Indigenous perspectives mobilize?
- How can cultural production be brought into conversation with different epistemologies and ontologies for thinking about the intersection of colonial and environmental violence?
- What are the potentials, and what are the limits, of the eco‐centric imperative for the study of imperialism?
A complete conference outline (i.e. the now closed call for papers) is available here (PDF, 143 KB).
Organizers: Michael C. Frank (University of Zurich, Switzerland) & Johannes Riquet (University of Tampere, Finland)
Contact: gaps2024@es.uzh.ch
