TRANSPOSITIONES, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2027) Call for Papers: Earth / Sediment / Trace: Geologies, Material Memories, and the More-than-Living World
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TRANSPOSITIONES Journal for Transdisciplinary and Intermedial Culture Studies /
Zeitschrift fu?r transdisziplinäre und intermediale Kulturforschung, ISSN 2749-4128 (print), 2749-4136 (online), Vol. 6, No. 2 (2027)
Call for Papers
Thematic focus of the issue:
Earth / Sediment / Trace: Geologies, Material Memories, and the More-than-Living World
Across the environmental humanities, increasing attention has been devoted to the geological dimensions of culture and the cultural dimensions of the Earth. Geohumanities, critical mineral studies, energy humanities, environmental justice scholarship, and related fields have opened new perspectives on extraction, sedimentation, toxicity, waste, material memory, and deep time. At a moment marked by accelerating ecological transformations and growing awareness of the material infrastructures that sustain contemporary life, geological matter has emerged as a crucial site for rethinking history, memory, environment, and cultural imagination. Rather than treating the Earth as a passive backdrop to human activity, recent scholarship has approached rocks, minerals, soils, fossils, sediments, and other material formations as archives of planetary processes, environmental change, cultural memory, and political conflict. Questions of resource extraction, environmental justice, and slow violence increasingly intersect with inquiries into deep temporalities, material traces, sacred landscapes, and the long afterlives of human and more-than-human actions.
This issue invites contributions that explore how literature, art, media, philosophy, religion, and cultural practices engage with geological matter, deep time, sedimented histories, and the material conditions of planetary life. We especially welcome work that investigates the cultural significance of rocks, minerals, fossils, soil, waste, ruins, and other forms of more-than-living matter, while also addressing questions of environmental justice, resource extraction, toxicity, and slow violence. We welcome analyses of literary, philosophical, historical, and cultural texts from a wide range of regions and traditions, including comparative and transnational perspectives. Topics may include:
• geohumanities and geological imagination;
• earth, stone, sediment, dust, and soil;
• lithic ecologies and critical mineral studies;
• deep time, planetary temporalities, and environmental history;
• extractivism, mining, resource conflicts, and energy humanities;
• environmental justice and slow violence;
• toxic landscapes and contaminated environments;
• waste, ruins, landfills, and material afterlives;
• fossils, paleontology, and material histories of life;
• material memory, archives, traces, and sedimented histories;
• sacred geographies, holy mountains, stones, and pilgrimage landscapes;
• archaeology, antiquarianism, and the materialities of the past;
• textual strata, sedimented knowledge, and epistemic layers;
• geological trauma, memory, and post-catastrophic landscapes;
• petrofiction, climate fiction, and environmental storytelling;
• artistic and literary engagements with earth materials;
• relations between living and non-living matter;
• fungi, decomposition, and processes of material transformation;
• posthumanist, new materialist, and decolonial approaches to geology and the earth.
Proposals comprising a 250-word abstract in English or German and a brief biographical note should be sent to: transpositiones@uw.edu.pl by October 20, 2026.
A final decision regarding abstract acceptance will be made by October 31.
Deadline for submitting completed manuscripts: February 28, 2027.
The issue is expected to be published in the autumn of 2027.
Piotr Kociumbas