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Call: Climate Fictions/ Indigenous Studies (Cambridge, 24-25 January 2020)
This conference seeks to initiate a multidisciplinary conversation on climate change, as conceived by, and re-inscribed within, Indigenous literatures
The University of Cambridge calls for participation by writers, artists, scholars, researchers, activists, and dissidents. Please apply by submitting up to 500 word abstracts (in case of papers), a portfolio of art (for exhibition), up to 5-minute trailers (for films and documentaries) and up to a page-length proposal (for presentations showcasing collaborative research). Artists who wish to exhibit are encouraged to get in touch before applying to discuss costs of installations.
Applications are invited via email until 25 September 2019. Material should be sent to climatefictions@cluttergmail.com.
Potential questions for discussion include:
- How have path-breaking Indigenous fictions extended a tradition of storytelling that has shaped contemporary modes, genres and critical paradigms of fiction?
- What critical, formal and generic relationships do climate fictions, or cli-fi, bear with established literary traditions of dystopia, Anthropocene and science-fictions? In what ways do contemporary Indigenous writers resist or respond to western academic paradigms of knowledge?
- How do modes and materialities of Indigenous expression, like oral, written, performative, digital and multimedia, intersect and affect the social, political and cultural dimensions of protest and resistance? How do these dimensions treat ecologies of time and space?
- What is the relationship between critical Indigenous studies and decolonization? How does the Indigenous transnational imaginary (as understood within literary studies) consolidate the plurality of Indigenous identities and relate not only to the national imaginary, but also to radical imaginaries that stem from race, gender or caste oppression? What would a critical comparativism look like?
- How do Indigenous fictions by and featuring female and/or Queer protagonists speak to the global issue of gender violence against Indigenous women and non-binary persons? In what ways do the fields of feminism, Indigenous Studies, and Queer Theory intersect through climate fictions?
- How do conceptions of land and ‘country’ respond to the traditions of landscape in English and Euroamerican canons? How do genre-defying Indigenous literatures re-envision the meanings of land rights, repatriation, and sovereignty?
- In what ways do emergent Indigenous fictions problematise and rethink ideas of sustainability and development? How do these literatures rewrite and project anti-capitalist forms, aesthetics, geographies, and economies?
- How do Indigenous short forms, like short fictions, memoirs, life-narratives, songs, travelogues, and testimonies, often collected and anthologised as part of the colonial archive, resist and recreate the idea of ‘archive’ itself? How does the Indigenous archive relate to technologies of memory and memory-making for Indigenous people?
- How does the conscious use of Indigenous vocabularies, grammars and syntactical forms within these fictions 're-invent the enemy’s language' (Joy Harjo, Gloria Bird) to affect a dialectic between English and Indigenous languages? What political purpose do these dialectics serve?
Accommodation will be provided to all speakers at the conference. Dependent on the outcome of additional applications for funding for the event, travel bursaries may be available for participants selected through the Call for Papers. Preference will be given in the first instance to Indigenous delegates travelling from abroad. If you would like to be considered for travel support, please give details of your likely costs and any institutional support that may be available to you when submitting your proposal.
Further information:
