ENGLISH GRADUATE STUDENT ASSOCIATION (EGSA) CONFERENCE 2023
Looking through the Anthropocene: Exploring Climate Change and Global Uncertainties Date: 10-12 March 2023 Since the industrial revolution, the advancement of human technology has facilitated the exponential exploitation of nature. The ramifications of this exploitation have prompted researchers to define the current epoch as “The Anthropocene,” where “humans act as a main determinant of the environment of the planet” (Chakrabarty 209). Humanity's new role as “geological agents” has created uncertainties and induced fears and anxieties about the future of terrestrial life, particularly for minority and marginalized people who are disproportionately affected by climate change (207). In Rehearsals for Living, Robyn Maynard insists that “it would require a deliberate obfuscation to view the racially uneven distribution of harms that the climate collapse engenders as accidental" (9). While ecological scientists warn of an inevitable environmental catastrophe, climate change activists have begun to raise awareness and call for constructive action to mitigate the concerning situation. The results of the continued efforts of climate scientists and activists encourage us to find communal solutions and build global solidarity—to go beyond narratives of resilience and create narratives of hope. Our three-day bimodal conference seeks abstracts for creative writings and academic papers that offer insightful and innovative perspectives on climate change and the Anthropocene. Through interdisciplinary and literary perspectives, we aim to create discussions about the global uncertainties that are posed by climate change and cultivate outlooks of hope.
Papers can cover a range of literary and interdisciplinary categories, including but not limited
to:
• Climate activism and literature
• 18th-19th century criticism of pastoral
environment and industrialization
• Ecocritical discourse
• Climate anxieties and complacencies
• Forced displacement and the climate
diaspora
• Formation and alteration of identities
due to climate change
• Relationship between war and climate
change
• In/visibility of minorities in
environmental action
• Decolonisation, climate justice and
climate action
• Climate change and Indigenous
practices
• Sustainability and literature
• Climate change: doom and/or hope
perspectives in literature
Please submit a 250 to 300-word abstract and a separate 100-word (maximum) author’s
biography including institutional affiliation to uottawa.conference@gmail.com by 3rd February
2023. Please remove all personal identifying markers in the document containing your abstract to facilitate the blind review of all submitted abstracts. Selected papers from the conference will be published in the Graduate Students’ academic journal. Send all enquiries to the Conference
Communications Coordinator via uottawa.conference@gmail.com.
Works Cited
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 35, no. 2,
Jan. 2009, pp. 197–222.
Maynard, Robyn, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Rehearsals for Living. Penguin Random
House Canada, 2022, p. 9.
2023 Conference Schedule
Opening Remarks
4:25 – 4:45 pm
Dr. Sara Landreth, Graduate Director
Department of English, University of Ottawa
Moira Duncan, President
English Graduate Students Association (EGSA)
Roundtable Discussion
Moderator:
Gideon Brobbey
4:45 – 6:15 pm
Dr. Anne Raine (Department of English, uOttawa)
Dr. Barbara Leckie (Department of English Language and Literature, & The Climate Commons, Carleton University)
Dr. Jennifer Baker (Department of English, uOttawa)Decolonizing the Anthropocene
Moderated by Ritu Kurien
11:00 – 11:40 am
• Babak Ashrafkhani, University of Victoria: The Anthropocene and its Anthropocentric Shell: An Environmental Multipattern and a New Foresight
• Gideon Brobbey, University of Ottawa: Climate Emergency, Capitalist Plunder and the Drive towards Exhaustion in Ken Saro-Wiwa’s “Home, Sweet Home” and “Night Ride”.Coffee Break
11:40 – 11:50 amEnvironmental Storytelling and Poetry
Moderated by Jessica Nash
11:50 – 12:50 pm
• Jessica Ann De Waal, Northumbria University: Extinct or energised? Ted Hughes’s environmental literature for children.
• Liam Kennedy-Finnerty, Dalhousie University : “Recipes for Disaster: Food Writing and Spiraling Temporalities in Richard Van Camp’s Short Fiction”
• Beth Shepherd, Carleton University: Concrete Poetry for the Anthropocene: Works by the AuthorLunch
12:50 – 2:00 pmClimate and Speculative Fiction
Moderated by Kirsten Bussiére
2:00 – 3.05 pm
• Katie Fritsche: University of Louisville
Princess Mononoke: Animated solutions for the Global Climate Crisis
• Ashley Liza Fernando, University of Ottawa: The Violent Effects of ‘Racialized’ Rape in N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy
• Sophie Lawall, University of Ottawa: Omens and Icons: Ancient Rome as a Religious Model for the Imperial Radch TrilogyCoffee Break
3:05-3:15pmEco-Phonemenology
Moderated by Patrick Williams
3:15-4:00pm
• Alyssa Jones, Université de Montreal: (Dis)unity With the Natural World: Conflicting Ecological Conscience in Virginia Woolf’s “Kew Gardens” and Between the Acts.
• Doina Ciochina, Université de Montréal: Middle-Earth Journeys: The Representation of Nature in The Hobbit and The Lord of the RingsSocial Event
6:00 pmClimate and New Paradigms
Moderated by Moira Duncan
11:00 - 12:10 pm
• Neve Sugars-Keen, Carleton University: One-Dimensional Mitigation: The Dangers of Technical-Rational Conceptions of Progress and Climate Action.
• Syeda Memoona Ali: Islamic Relief Worldwide, Pakistan Office
Climate-induced 2022 Floods in Pakistan: Challenges and Opportunities for a Sustainable Climate Resilient Rehabilitation and Reconstruction.
• Giuliano Reis, University of Ottawa
Yusuf Khalid, University of Ottawa
Floriane Tsering, University of Ottawa.
The Ecological Identity of Racialized Secondary Science Student Teachers: An Exploratory Study.
Coffee Break
12:10 - 12:20 pm
Closing Reflections
12:20 - 12:40 pm
Suyi Okungbowa