Resourcing Love: Land Management in North American Literature and Culture (proposed edited collection)
What does it mean to manage public lands, environmental resources, waterways, and marine environments? How does the language of management situate people in relation to the ecosystems upon which they depend? What technologies, affects, aesthetics, environments, individuals, power dynamics, poetics, or practices come to mind when we think about land and water management? And how might the arts and humanities enable us to create a more inclusive discourse that envisions new management practices and policies that center justice, environmental attunement, good relations, and even love?
Resourcing Love: Land Management in North American Literature and Culture seeks to explore the ongoing histories of human-centered ecosystem management in the lands and waters that comprise what is now known as North America by tracking the divergent ways in which human-environmental relations have been articulated, experienced, understood, represented, and/or regulated. This edited collection, consisting of chapters ranging from 6,000-8,000 words, encourages us to reimagine what it means to manage environmental elements beyond the limits of utility, commodification, and control. The word "management" itself may be interrogated and is used rather expansively in this project to embrace all kinds of human-environmental engagements, ranging from constructing dams and removing invasive grasses, to gathering corn pollen and resting in the shade of a mesquite tree. We are particularly interested in essays that highlight BIPOC and queer approaches to managing lands as they are diversely represented in literature, film, visual arts, performing arts, park interpretive materials, or other diverse forms of media.
Additionally, we envision the project beginning with a “Keywords” section with brief (2,000-3,000 words) entries that detail a word’s history, outline its role in various discourses, and/or suggest possibilities for future research. Terms may include natural resource, nature, environment, sustainability, reciprocity, the commons, property, wilderness/wildness, conservation, and preservation, to name a few. In the spirit of collaboration and co-management, we warmly welcome ideas that can further nourish this project.
Please submit an abstract (300-500 words) and bio (100-200 words) to Kristen Brown (kristen.brown@northern.edu) and Jada Ach (jada.ach@asu.edu) by April 1, 2024. Accepted essays will be due September 30, 2024.
Topics might include:
-traditional ecological knowledge (TEK)
-Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS)
-land management and situated knowledges
-storytelling as land management
-management’s settler colonial legacies
-national parks and forests in literature
-Indigenous-led land management and stewardship
-Indigenous fire science
-managing borderlands
-land management and embodiment
-new archives in land management
-(counter)mapping public lands
-Latinx relations to land
-park interpretation
-oceanic management in literature or film
-wildlife management in literature or film
-maintenance and repair in literature
-managing energy and infrastructure
-water rights and histories
-managing (urban) deserts
-queering land management, queer ecology
-land management theories and futures
-Indigenous sovereignty and nationhood
-ceremony as land management
-management and elemental ecocriticism
-women and land management history
-feminist approaches to land management
-management as worldbuilding
-land management and Black futures
-managing “waste,” wastelanding
-critical theories for land management
-gray literature and concepts of use (ethical, multiple, beneficial)
Editors: Kristen Brown and Jada Ach