[Commlist] Call For Papers: SAGE Special Issue with Earth in focus

*Themed Issue of /International Journal of Cultural Studies/*


  *On Mediations and the Environment: Earth in Focus***

Guest-editor: Miyase Christensen, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm 
University; the Department of Philosophy and History, KTH Royal 
Institute of Technology, SWEDEN

(miyase.christensen /at/ ims.su.se) <mailto:(miyase.christensen /at/ ims.su.se)>

(miyachristensen /at/ yahoo.com) <mailto:(miyachristensen /at/ yahoo.com)>

Over the past decade, themes and paradigms that incorporate an 
‘environment lens’ have gained prominence in a wide range of research 
areas in the broad realm of cultural studies. The increased visibility 
of pressing questions such as environmental justice provided a positive 
push for historically more western-centric and positivistic disciplines 
in social sciences and humanities to pay greater attention to overlooked 
localities and epistemologies. Yet, the level of increase in the urgency 
of the need for social transformation in particular areas such as 
climate change or marine pollution is not matched with the level of 
expansion of disciplinary and geographic cross-breeding and 
transformative thinking in environmental sciences and environmental 
humanities. Academic knowledge and publications produced in humanities 
and social sciences, including media and communication studies, still 
remain, for the large part, western-centric and display a limited degree 
of inter-, multi-, or trans-disciplinarity—notable exceptions and 
aspirations not-withstanding. Disciplinary and geographic provincialism 
continue to play a significant role in shaping research agendas as well 
as policymaking, despite the existence of different vulnerabilities. It 
is fair to suggest that despite the increased visibility of 
environmental themes and formerly absent regions and locales in 
scholarly research, visual and textual analyses as well as narratives 
that originate /from /such localities themselves or attention to forms 
of ‘slow violence’ (Nixon, 2011), rather than to disaster news or 
sensational scenarios, remain limited.

The purpose of this themed issue is to explore a variety of themes, 
topics and visions in the study of the environment in cultural studies 
in general, and media and communication studies in particular.Studies of 
environmental narratives in some fields such as literature and film 
studies —ecocriticism, by way of an example, is an inherently 
interdisciplinary field— , philosophy, and history have displayed 
ingenuity and awareness of geographic diversity, there is room and need 
for greater spill over to disciplines such as media and communication 
studies where analyses of environmental news and electronic content have 
reigned supreme. One starting point for this themed issue is the idea 
that environmental narratives are incessantly and precipitously 
transformed as they traverse diverse mediums/media and scales. At a time 
when our mediation and communication channels (from literature, film, 
legacy media, social media platforms to museum exhibitions, visual and 
audio-art installations) are unprecedentedly complex and interconnected, 
bold and innovative research agendas that address the ‘mediated 
environment’ with an eye toward creatingcross-breeding within cultural 
studies are called for.

The second standpoint that underlies the crux of the themed issue is the 
essential need to bring in knowledge and perspectives from localities 
that remain on the margins in terms of their visibility in academic 
studies. While the actual and virtual sites and locales (e.g. legacy 
media, museums, literature, film, music, archives, academic 
publications) where narrative and scholarly interventions materialize 
and constitute /spaces of narrativity/ (see Christensen et al, 2018) or, 
simply put, ‘mediat/ing/ environments’, are located in or originate from 
predominantly western hubs, visibility of locally situated knowledge and 
content from ‘mediat/ed/ environments’ (e.g. the Arctic, the Amazon, 
Pacific Islands, etc.) which experiencethe impacts of 
environmentaldegradation at a much higher degree are rendered peripheral.

_Content_

The articles the journal issue brings together will explore various 
constructions of the human and non-human environments and environmental 
change as these are mediated through narratives in various venues, 
creating a recent and hybrid account of how we imagine and reproduce the 
environment.

We invite abstracts for papers based on research from areas of inquiry 
related with the mediation of environmental narratives as well as 
cognate disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Submissions 
from non-Western contexts are most particularly welcome. Research that 
crosses disciplinary boundaries is encouraged, as are innovative 
approaches that combine practical and scholarly standpoints. Articles 
may choose to address the following topics, or pursue others that are of 
relevance to the issue theme:

·Local -global positionings of environmental problems and themes

·Environmental migration

·Environment in art and activism

·Political change and civic discourse

·Indigeneity and the environment

·Environmental time / chronotopes

·Environmental security and risk in everyday visions / mediations

·Mediated disasters and utopian and/dystopian futures

·Environment, tourism and travel

·Environment and labor

·Environment and health

·Environment and material resources

·Gendered and ecofeminist considerations

·Religious / theological narratives

·Sustainability and land sovereignty

·Environmental impacts of the media and cultural industries

Submitters may choose to focus on electronic media, news, literature, 
popular science publications, films and entertainment media, virtual 
environments, popular organizational venues, museums or urban space 
(e.g. street art and graffiti).

*References*

Christensen, M., Åberg, A., Lidström, S., & Larsen, K. (2018). 
Environmental themes in popular narratives, /Environmental 
Communication, /Vol 12 (1), 1-6.

Nixon, R. (2011) Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, 
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Please send 350 to 500-word abstracts and short bios to 
(miyase.christensen /at/ ims.su.se) <mailto:(miyase.christensen /at/ ims.su.se)> (AND 
cc’ed to (miyachristensen /at/ yahoo.com) <mailto:(miyachristensen /at/ yahoo.com)>) 
by *15 June 2021. *Authors of selected submissions will be notified by 
*25 June 2021*. Full papers (6500-8000 words) are due* 15 November 2021*.

_*NO PAYMENT BY THE AUTHORS IS REQUIRED. *_


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