Climate Diasporas
Annual Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA)
November 7-10, 2024
Sheraton Dallas, Texas
This conference seeks contributions that think through the co-constitution of climates and diasporas. Today more than ever, these are mutually informed concepts. They are also plural, with ‘climate’ describing everything from political moods to affective exchanges to habitats to global temperatures. Likewise, “diaspora” indicates not just migrations and movements of people but dispersions more broadly including those of other animals, plants, germs, ideas, ideologies, cultures, and concepts.
Perhaps our most pressing understanding of climate relates to issues of global temperature, the rise of which is no longer debated. Fires, floods, famines, drastic temperature changes, and rising seas, to name but a few natural “disasters,” all attest to the fact that the world as we have known it is no longer the case; however, that does not mean the narratives or knowledge of climate change have stabilized. The ways in which the Global North and the Global South experience temperature fluctuations and environmental shifts differ quite radically. This conference will consider issues of climate change, not as a universally experienced singularity, but, rather, as a global phenomenon that is ideologically structured. If we take diasporas to mean dispersions, the migrations and movements of people, other animals, plants, germs, ideas, ideologies, cultures, and concepts, then the varied responses to climate change also undermine and threaten hegemonic ideologies that have historically structured climate. We welcome papers that address these differences as well as proposals (presentations, panels, roundtables) on other SLSA-related topics.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
| Indigeneity Race Class Gender Cultural Difference Climate Environmental Humanities Blue Humanities Capitalism | “Natural Disasters” Collisions and Collusions Conflicts Accommodations Confusions Breaks and Breakdowns Chaos Sustainability |
Submit papers/proposals to this Easy Chair site by May 30, 2024:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=slsa2024
Conference Website: Forthcoming
Contact email for inquiries: slsa24@litsciarts.org
Registration: https://slsa.press.jhu.edu/membership/conference
All conference presenters must be SLSA members; to join or renew membership: https://slsa.press.jhu.edu/membership/conference
Program Committee: Rajani Sudan (conference organizer), Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal,
Elizabeth Donaldson, Alan Rauch, and Raymond Malewitz
Sponsoring Institutions: Southern Methodist University and University of Texas-Dallas
