Call for Papers: Men and Nature: Gender, Power, and Environmental Change
Deadline: 1 September 2015
11.06.2015
Date and Location: 26–28 February 2016, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
Conveners: Sherilyn MacGregor (Keele University, UK) and Nicole Seymour (California State University, Fullerton, USA)
The Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, a joint initiative of LMU Munich and the Deutsches Museum in Munich, invites paper proposals for a workshop focused on exploring the connections between masculinities and environmental change in the past, in contemporary societies, and in visions of the future.
“Gender,” in the environmental humanities and social sciences, has long been synonymous with “women.” Feminist and ecofeminist scholars have produced a great deal of work on the links between femininities and environments and on women’s involvement in environmental politics and practices. More recently, the emerging field of queer ecology has troubled the binary construction of gender that traditionally has informed (eco)feminist research. What remains under-addressed are the myriad ways in which masculinities and masculinized roles, identities, and practices shape human relationships with the more-than-human world. Indeed, the few available scholarly articles that do interrogate masculinity and environment begin with the recognition (and a lament) that there is so little research available.
Of course, men of all backgrounds figure prominently in local and global environmental (his)stories, and elite men hold the most cultural and economic power to shape the contemporary environmental problematique. But rarely is their gender itself an object of critical inquiry and analysis. It is the purpose of this RCC workshop to shine light on and perhaps start to redress this curious lacuna in the environmental humanities and social sciences literature.The workshop aims to bring together academics, professionals, artists, writers, and activists who have an interest in exploring the connections between masculinities and environmental change in the past, in contemporary societies, and in visions of the future.
The proposal format is open, but please include a statement of how you will engage with the topics and themes of the workshop, and a description of what your presentation might entail by 1 September 2015 to conferences@rcc.lmu.de.
The call for papers can be found here.