What, when & where
The Pastoral: New Trajectories in the Anthropocene
Special Issue of Interval(le)s
Since its very beginning, Ecocriticism – and its so-called four “waves” – has highlighted the inextricable entanglement of the pastoral with Western perceptions, representations and conceptualizations of the environment (Buell 1995; 2005; Slovic 2010). The recent emergence and multiplication of analytical perspectives, theories, and neologisms related to this subject, including the ‘post-pastoral’ (Gifford, 1999), the ‘postmodern pastoral’ (Corey and Waldrep 2012), and the ‘necropastoral’ (McSweeney, 2015) has evidenced its absolute centrality in current debates on culture and the arts while interrogating problematic notions such as “wilderness” and “frontier” as well as the disorienting affective dimensions of the “abject” and the “sublime”. In addition, the relative cohesion of a plethora of different perspectives on the pastoral, when they attempt to move beyond traditional issues of nostalgia and escapism, corroborates the establishment of a new step within its long-standing evolution which should not be overlooked.
While ‘pastoral’ continues to remain a “contested term” considering the “bewildering variety of works” to which it has been attributed (Loughrey 8), Donna Haraway’s urge to “stay with the trouble” (2016) invites scholars to engage with the intricacy of this notion through a transdisciplinary method inspired by new materialist trends and the “New New Synthesis” in arts which seeks to bring together human and nonhuman realities, practices and ecologies (63). And while Leo Marx first discussed ‘complex pastoral’ in the presence of a textual reference undermining the reader’s appreciation of the idyll (5-11) today, new aspects of pastoral complexity are called into account when reflecting on the epistemological stance advocated by the burgeoning field of the Environmental Humanities (Oppermann and Iovino, 2017). Such critical approaches can help us meet the imaginative challenges of representing and interpreting current crises, from climate change to global pandemics, with which the pastoral coexists and mutates, together with its contradictions and paradoxes.
In this regard, we are launching a new issue of Interval(le)s, the online journal of CIPA, dedicated to the exploration of emerging pastoral trajectories in contemporary culture, while creating a space of scholarly debate for new ways of interpreting, performing, and developing this concept, particularly in regard to how it negotiates the idea of the human-nonhuman relationship. Through this call, we invite studies that investigate new displays of the pastoral in fields of study, including literature, architecture, the visual arts, media, and advertisement. In addition, interest is also expressed in regard to research which, by adopting a more retrospective glance inspired by a renovated ecocritical hermeneutics, wishes to reevaluate the archive(s) of Western culture in regard to the many manifestations of the pastoral from Hesiod to our times.
Deadline & how to apply
Authors are invited to submit a 200-word bio and a 300-word abstract to stefano.rozzoni@unibg.it and david.lombard@uliege.be by January 15, 2021.
The authors will be notified of abstract acceptance by February 1. Manuscripts (6000-7000 words including in-text MLA references and bibliography) are expected by April 30 (and revised manuscripts by June 18) for publication in September 2021.
Other info, Links & conditions
Should you have any questions, please contact the guest editors Stefano Rozzoni (stefano.rozzoni@unibg.it) and David Lombard (david.lombard@uliege.be).
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