Gendered Ecologies and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers
Jillmarie Murphy and Dewey W. Hall, Editors
Union College and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
If ecology is without nature, as Timothy Morton provocatively argued in 2007, then one may wonder of ecology without the feminine as a corollary. For nature, much like the feminine, has been fetishized, exoticized, and romanticized as a signifier emptied out—a sort of lacuna. If we can be at ease with the gap, vacancy, or interval and, perhaps, theorize about the unfilled space while sorting out the inconsistencies of what it means to represent nature, the feminine, and androgyny, then we might begin to trace the valuable contributions of nineteenth-century women writers to the development of the term oecologia coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866 and beyond.
Gendered Ecologies and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers invites article-length typescripts (e.g., abstracts and/or 15-20 page drafts) that consider the spaces and places women writers have occupied as part of gendering the term ecology—whether masculine, feminine, or androgynous. Indeed, examples may span from Dorothy Wordsworth’s gendering of nature and the floating island as feminine to Susan Fenimore Cooper’s keen observations of flora and fauna in Rural Hours to Margaret Fuller’s “ecology of self” in Summer on the Lakes to Octavia Hill’s preservationist action in the Lake District among many other women writers. The edition will feature three guiding principles: transhistorical, transatlantic, and transcorporeality (Alaimo, Bodily Natures, 2010). Topics may include:
New Materialist Ecologies:
Feminist Political Ecologies and Built Environments:
Gendered Ecologies and Androgyny:
Submissions must include the paper title, abstract (200 words), C.V., and, preferably, a 15-20 page typescript sent to murphyj@union.edu and dwhall@cpp.edu by August 31 for consideration. If accepted, then completed typescript aligned closely with the scope of the edition will be due by January 15, 2018. Submit unpublished writing that will address the CFP directly.