Bestiary and various theological texts, British Library, London.
Bestiary and various theological texts, British Library, London.

Affective Habitus

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New Environmental Histories of Botany, Zoology and Emotions

19-21 June, 2014, Humanities Research Centre, ANU

Perceptions, values and representations of our relationship with the physical environment have been read anew in the Anthropocene century through the lens of ecocriticism and affect theory. At present we are witnessing a turn in ecocritical theory to the relevance of empathy, sympathy and concordance, and how these move across flora and fauna. This conference seeks to refine the turn, while articulating the expansion to the analysis of the environmental humanities more broadly.

Confirmed speakers include: Tom Griffiths, Eileen Joy, Michael Marder, John Plotz, Elspeth Probyn, Ariel Salleh, Will Steffen and Gillen D’Arcy Wood.

Areas for consideration include:

Anthropocene aesthetics

Archives, encyclopaedias and images of the natural world

Colonialism: pre-histories and the present

Cultural studies: art, dance, film, literature, music, new media, photography, theatre

Ecocriticism and Critical Animal Studies: theory and practice of empathy

Ecopsychology

Emotions and the environment: learned feelings and historical variability

Environmental history: from the Middle Ages to the present

Europa-Terra Australis: adaptation and heritage; continuities and disjunctions

Global ecologies

Green pedagogy: agency, senses and the lifeworld

Indigenous ecologies

Mappae mundi: emotional geographies and territories of affect

Open to others: more-than-human worlds in non-western spaces

Renaissance emotions: animals, minerals, plants

Seeds and seed banks

Studio based inquiry in one of the following fields: (a) climate change; (b) botany; (c) fauna (either extinction or migration)

Affective Habitus is the fifth biennial conference of the Association for ths Tudt of Literature, Environment & Culture, Australia and New Zealand (ASLEC-ANZ); an Environmental Humanities collaboratory with The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions; and a Minding Animals International partner event. Selected conference papers will be published in the Animal Studies Journal, and the Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology.

Please direct inquiries and paper and panel proposals to 2014EHC@anu.edu.au. The deadline for submission of abstracts (c. 200 words) is March 30, 2014.

hrc.anu.edu.au/affectivehabitus

Image: Bestiary and various theological texts, British Library, London.