[Commlist] Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies Special issue: Colors in Econarratives about the Human and More-than-Human World

Guest Editors: Professor Peggy Karpouzou and Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki 
[Abstracts due: 31 August 2024]

Colors are not only visual stimuli, but also social constructs that play 
a pivotal role in our perception, psychology, behavior and 
communication. Colors also evoke a range of emotions, senses and 
memories that are deeply rooted in various cultural, national and 
traditional contexts. The meaning, role and impact of colors can vary 
widely across different linguistic, cultural and historical periods, 
reflecting complex interactions between language, aesthetics and 
relationships. The various differences in color symbolism illustrate how 
cultural beliefs and practices surrounding our daily life, events, 
occasions and habits can shape the meanings attributed to colors that 
can evolve over time, e.g. the color black symbolizes death or evil, the 
color white symbolizes peace and purity (e.g., Conroy, 1921; Birren, 
2013; Feisner and Reed, 2014). Colors’ varieties are actually described 
in terms of “color pluralism” (Mizrahi, 2023), which is not only 
restricted to the varieties of colors, but it is open to the different 
perspectives between humans and species when both perceive each other 
via senses e.g. see them, feel them, taste them in food, etc.

Understanding the complex and dynamic relationship between colors and 
nature requires an interdisciplinary approach in Environmental 
Humanities that draws on multiple fields of knowledge, such as literary 
theory and cultural criticism, psychology, linguistics, arts, 
philosophy, etc. in order to understand the colors’ nature, function, 
role and impact on life-forms and the world around us. For instance, 
ecophenomenology and ecopsychology focus on the embodied experience and 
psychology within nature respectively, e.g., how we perceive and 
interpret the colors around us as well as how they affect our psychology 
by often considering them as a ‘healing space’. Our thinking is oriented 
to the study of nature, ecology and colors articulated in terms of 
“prismatic ecology” which delves into the matter of how the vibrant 
worlds are formed by colors (Cohen, 2013), the reflections, symbolisms, 
function and role within the natural processes and phenomena as well as 
their impact on the human and more-than-human world (e.g. flora, fauna, 
micro-organisms, etc.).

An ecological narration describes human interactions with other species 
and the physical environment, drawing from narratology, ecology, 
critical discourse analysis as well as ecolinguistics, offering insights 
on how ecology, language and narration raise awareness and play a 
pivotal role in structuring our life. Econarratives’ kinds, structure, 
content, rhetoric and poetics convey environmental understanding and 
knowledge via spatiotemporal organization, characterization, 
narratological techniques etc., paving the way to offer new perspectives 
and approaches to re-connect humanity with nature. We query how readers 
perceive and engage with econarratives and how the processes of 
encountering them stand to affect real-word behaviors and values (e.g., 
James and Morel, 2023; von Mossner, 2017; Slovic, 2008). In this sense, 
econarratives mobilize affect and offer factual insights into the 
functioning of ecologies by describing life-forms and their 
entanglements. By studying econarratives of colors we will focus on 
questions such as what kind of narrations are embodied theoretically, 
literally, philosophically, etc. How do cultural norms and values shape 
our ecological thinking on colors? How are colors involved with our 
senses and what kind of visual streams are offered? How about colors’ 
representations in cultural, e.g. literal, aesthetic, etc. texts, and 
how about the role and impact of colors in human and more-than-human 
life-forms’ behaviors, senses, emotions, moods, thinking and welfare? 
How is our thought expanded to colors beyond texts and works (Iovino and 
Oppermann, 2013)? How do colors communicate e.g., social, political and 
religious meanings in different cultures, including indigenous 
communities? How do environmental concerns affect the production and 
consumption of colors? How do authors, artists, etc. use color to 
express eco-aesthetic, symbolic, or functional ideas? How do scholars 
study colors in Environmental Humanities, Posthumanities, etc.?

In this special issue, econarratives of colors explore the complexities 
of pairing material environments with their representations with 
narrative forms of environmental understanding and ‘propose’ a change in 
how we interact with the environment today. This endeavor could be 
effectively executed while exploring storytelling of coloring 
imaginaries and sustainable futures as ‘narrative rehabilitation’ to 
draw attention to values and responsibilities and envision strategies to 
avoid possible ‘disastrous narrative endings’. Econarratives of colors 
could also be a new approach to overcoming the traditional dichotomies 
of how we see the world around us, including ourselves, laying the 
ground to think beyond colors in a more-than-human world. They might 
also encourage us to think beyond the classical narratological analysis, 
and consider new analytical tools suited to the current planetary 
challenges.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to the following:
• narratives of colors in Environmental Humanities, Posthumanities, 
Environmental Digital Humanities, Blue Humanities, Ocean Humanities, 
Plant Humanities, Animal Studies, Medical Humanities, Energy Humanities, 
Public Humanities, Citizen Humanities
• colors in -cenes, e.g. Anthropocene, Symbiocene, Capitalocene, etc.
• colors in ecocriticism, eco-poetics, ecofeminism, queer ecologies, etc.
• econarratives of colors in comparative and global literature
• econarratives of colors in continental philosophy
• econarratives of colors in visual, media and film studies
• colors and soundscape ecologies
• colors in eco-/bio-art
• colors in food studies
• ecotheological, ecopsychological and indigenous environmental 
approaches on colors
• colors and biopolitics
• the term, concept and language of colors in ecolinguistics
• colors in green pedagogies/education studies
• storytelling of re-connecting/repairing humanity with nature via colors
• storytelling of coloring imaginaries and sustainable futures

The working language is English. Please send an abstract of up to 300 
words and further queries to Professor Karpouzou’s e-mail at 
(pkarpouzou /at/ phil.uoa.gr) <mailto:(pkarpouzou /at/ phil.uoa.gr)> and Dr. Zampaki’s 
e-mail at (nikzamp /at/ phil.uoa.gr) <mailto:(nikzamp /at/ phil.uoa.gr)> until the 
31st of August 2024.

After the abstracts’ final selection and approval/acceptance, the 
Editors will notify the author(s) to submit their full in articles 
(6.000-8.000 words) to their e-mails by the end of February 2025.

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