Call for Papers
Representing Place:
Essays on Language, Literature, and the Environment
Stand on the mesa edge at Walpai and look west over the bare distances
toward the pale blue outlines of the San Francisco Peaks where the
ka'tsina spirits reside. So little lies between you and the sky. So
little lies between you and the earth. --Leslie Marmon Silko
This quotation celebrates the immediacy of sky and earth, but it also
raises the fundamental question that will serve as the focus of this
collection: what is that “so little” that does mediate between our
environment and ourselves, and what is its importance?
Part of what does lie between us and earth and sky is our representation
of those places – the discursive conventions that enable and constrain
our relationship to the environment. Essays that explore the ways in
which literature reflects and constructs our understanding of the
environment are sought for a new collection, Representing Place.
Although articles may focus on specific literary and/or critical texts,
submissions should include a theoretical discussion of the nature of
literary representation and its real or potential impact on human
relationships to the environment.
Potential contributions include (but are by no means limited to):
- Essays that explore the ways in which literary discourses work out the
relationship between “the place itself” and our language for it. How
does place inform representation, and how do the means of representation
inform our sense of place?
- Essays that examine significant tropes and figures of place in
literary texts and literary history.
- Essays that assess literary discourse’s impact on how nature is
perceived. Do specifically literary forms of discourse construct
“nature” in ways that differ from or put pressure on other discourses
of nature? Does an interest in representing place put pressure on the
category of the “literary”?
- Essays that attempt to construe environmental representation as a
relevant category of political analysis (perhaps in conjunction with a
focus on gender, class, and race issues in literary texts).
- Essays that examine the ways in which literary forms structure the
sense of place. For example, is “place” ever more than “setting” in
narrative? What does the spatial emphasis do to critical assessment of
narrative fiction?
- Essays that develop arguments about the potential contributions of
literary theory to environmental discourse.
Submit essays (format: MLA 4th ed.) by March 15, 1999 to:
Steven Rosendale
Department of English, Box 6032
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-6032
Tel: (520) 523-5846
Email: Steven.Rosendale@nau.edu
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or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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