FRAME 38.1
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Organization: FRAME Journal of Literary Studies
One of the primary challenges in confronting the climate crisis is effectively representing its magnitude and impact on both the environment and humanity. The quest for a sustainable future cannot be fulfilled without the capacity of imagining one. As Timothy Clark argues in his work on scale framing (Ecocriticism on the Edge, 2015), the act of imagining requires placing concepts within specific temporal and contextual frameworks. Envisioning the complex effects and mechanisms of climate change necessitates grappling with unprecedented and expansive scales. Environmental fiction has emerged as a literary field that attempts to capture these scales and their interplays. Clark is concerned about how literary representations of scale and scale effects can lead to “intellectual miniaturisation” (78), meaning that by trying to make unrepresentable scale effects representable, art simplifies the Anthropocene and delivers solutions that undermine the complexity of the issues at hand. Nonetheless, some scholars, such as Adam Texler, believe that there are “imaginative processes that are fundamental to engaging with climate change” (5). This issue seeks to explore such imaginative processes, crossing chasms of deep time (John McPhee), and questioning what we need to do to (re)build a sustainable world, to discover how we can move from ‘page to planet’: what is the transformative potential of literature in navigating the complexities of the sustainability crisis?
In this issue of FRAME, we therefore ask scholars and graduate students from literary studies and other related fields to critically tend to the topic of sustainability. How does literature engage with questions regarding sustainability? Can literature counter and critically examine neoliberal or hegemonic discourses surrounding sustainability? How do creative narratives have the potential to help us imagine sustainable futures and relationships? Themes and topics related to these questions might include, but are not limited to:
- Futurity: how does literature imagine sustainable futures?
- Sustainable philosophies: Posthumanism, New Materialism, Thing Theory
- Neoliberalism, greenwashing
- Toxins, pollution, waste
- Archives and conservation practices
- Care: kinship, planetary care, health, ethics
- Indigenous cosmology and relationality
- Materiality of literature: digital, paper, oral
- Human-nature-nonhuman relationships
- Ecological violence and justice, ecocide
- Reimagining temporality: deep time, multispecies perspectives, circularity
- Environmental genres: climate fiction, environmental justice memoirs, ecopoetry, green utopia
- Critical logistics
- Econarratology
- Environmental injustice
- Agency question: locus, responsibility
- Non-Western ontologies/epistemologies
The above questions and concerns are only a few of the many themes that could be explored in the upcoming issue. However, we would like to stress that while FRAME encourages interdisciplinary and creative approaches, every submission should show a clear connection to literary studies, as we are a literary journal first and foremost.
If you are interested in writing for FRAME, please submit a brief proposal of max. 500 words by 6 September 2024 via the email address info@frameliteraryjournal.com. Proposals should include a thesis statement, general structure, and a preliminary reflection on the argument’s theoretical framework. On the basis of all abstracts, contributors whose proposals are accepted will be notified by 13 September 2024, and asked to submit a draft version of the paper by 1 November 2024. Be mindful that we hold the right to reject draft versions to ensure consistency and coherence across all contributions to the issue.
The deadline for the article’s first full version is 13 December 2024, after which the editing and peer review process begins. Articles in our main section, which is reserved for scholars with a doctoral degree, have a word limit of 6000 words, including bibliography and footnotes. For our Masterclass section, graduate and PhD students are invited to write up to a maximum of 4000 words. Please feel free to contact us at info@frameliteraryjournal.com, should you have any questions. Proposals can also be submitted to this email address. More information about our journal, as well as our submission guidelines, can be found on our website: www.frameliteraryjournal.com
Works Cited
Clark, Timothy. Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept. Bloomsbury publishing, 2015.
Trexler, Adam. Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in a Time of Climate Change. University of Virginia Press, 2015.
McPhee, John. Basin and Range. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981.
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