What, when & where
Call for Contributions to Edited Volume “Women Who Write Animals”
Contributions are sought for a volume that seeks to rethink and recover the history and future of English-speaking female authors who wrote about animals (as scientists, popularizers, storytellers, novelists and poets) from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first century. We seek to explore the question of how female writers conceive nature and represent animals from a feminist perspective by examining their role in the reconstruction of nature and looking at how they represent non-human animals and their/our relationship with them. The collection aims to pay tribute to what Anglophone female writers did in the name of nature and local wildlife by recovering their contributions and reviewing history.
During the Victorian and Edwardian ages many women were in the forefront of movements such as the NAVS -National Anti-Vivisection Society (1875) the RSPCA -Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (1824) or the RSPB -Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (1889). By seeking the right to vote, women also became active in protecting animals from threats like vivisection, hunting and deforestation and took a special interest in a number of issues surrounding nature study and natural history such as the protection of species, the introduction of plants and animals into the home, and of course the animal story. As Linda Hogan, Deena Metzger and Brenda Peterson remind us in Intimate Nature: The Bond between Women and Animals ““Women have been vital in reestablishing the relationships with animals and the rest of nature” (1998 xii).
One of the questions Cheryl Glotfelty asks in the introduction to The Ecocriticism Reader is whether women write about nature differently than men (1996 xix). Much of women’s nature writing has been informed by the understandings of ecofeminism. Many of the earliest women writers seemed to describe a nature that existed “out there”, separate from themselves.
With this in mind, we seek essays that engage with the works of female voices who often dared to defy the norms imposed by the society or their time and managed to make themselves heard. We are interested in writings which bear testimony to our relationships between species and offer new understandings of animals and women: women who have studied animals, lived with and among animals and women who have been caretakers of other species.
It is through these voices that we intend to question whether and how the representation of animals is influenced by gender and study the cultural attitudes and ethical implications they convey to the reader through their imaginary worlds. By analysing the different narrative strategies and approaches used by these female writers and by looking at the literary representations of nature and animals, we aim to give voice to and make visible their literary and activist efforts by examining their role in the reconstruction of nature and analysing how these representations were also a reflection of the society in which they lived.
We invite contributions that engage with different approaches used by female writers to give voice to what they said and did by examining their role in the reconstruction of nature and above all by analysing how these literary representations were also often a reflection of the society in which they lived.
We welcome works from a wide range of perspectives and from multiple genres including but not limited to poetry, fiction and nonfiction, essay, animal stories and fables, children’s writing, post-colonial writing, science education, nature writing, environmental literature, to current dystopias, post-apocalyptic fiction, climate fiction and ecopoetics.
We hope these contributions will inspire a productive discussion on the role of how female writers represent animals and how we understand the reconstruction of nature from the past to our present.
Deadline & how to apply
Papers should be theoretically informed, original, unpublished, and address a distinctive focus on female writers and animals. Detailed proposals (up to 1,000 words) for full essays (6,000 – 7,500 words), should be sent as word files to the editors (Lorraine Kerslake kerslake@ua.es and Diana Villanueva dvillanv@unex.es) by 23 December 2022. Submissions should include author’s name, affiliation and email address, a tentative title, up to 5 keywords, a short bibliography as well as a 200-word CV
Notification of acceptance: Proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee. Authors will be informed of the results of their submission before 30 Jan 2023.
The submission deadline for accepted essays will be 30 June 2023.
Selected essays will be compiled in a volume that will be published by a top international publisher (Routledge, Brill, Palgrave or similar).
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