CFP Autumn 2026 "Eco-crip Cultures: Disability and the Environment"

"Eco-crip Cultures: Disability and the Environment"

Co-guest editors:   Shanna Lino (York University, Canada)

                                    Maryanne L. Leone (Assumption University, USA)

This special issue explores the intersection of ecology and disability. Recognizing the materiality of both human and more-than-human bodies, we invite articles that consider the possibilities afforded by eco-crip theory to examine the marginalizing cultures of normalization, ableism, and speciesism and to positively value wide-ranging understandings, experiences, and contexts of embodied disability and environment.

Eco-crip literature, film, art, and criticism interrogate culturally situated power structures that appraise sentient and non-sentient beings/forms/entities as deficient and that cement devaluation and exploitation through institutionalized, pathologized systems. These approaches acknowledge that nonhuman tropes have long been employed to derogate people with disabilities and thus deploy critical strategies from the fields of disability studies and the environmental humanities that together argue for non-hierarchical appraisals of differing abilities and of embodiment along with an affirmation of interdependence.

Crip theory deepens the critique of homogenization to defiantly salvage and resituate the derogatory term that it reappropriates. The merger of crip theory with ecocriticism expands the assertion of the material intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality to also engage with ecology, thus exploring the potential for mutually beneficial existences of disabled bodies and communities with the natural environment.

We invite the submission of internationally diverse articles that bring a cultural studies approach to the representation of disability and ecology. Topics may include:

• representations of tensions, synergies, toxicity, and health of spaces (urban, natural, accessible, ) and bodies (human, nonhuman, hybrid)
• cultural texts that posit the replacement of extractive economic and cultural models that focus on quantitative measures of production and profit with new definitions of well-being that prioritize community, sufficiency (rather than abundance), and a plurality of bodies and contributions
• the possibilities afforded by eco-crip cultural production to shift away from the normative approaches that pathologize disability and/or greenwash ecological crises
• textual portrayals of the ways in which provisions of care and interspecies collaborations provide emotional and physical support of disabled bodies and may enhance human and more-than-human understanding and/or reinforce exploitative patterns

Contributions may be sent in English, French, or Spanish. Please submit a 300-word abstract proposal by July 15, 2025, to the editors: Shanna Lino (slino@glendon.yorku.ca), Maryanne L. Leone (maleone@assumption.edu). We will provide feedback on your proposal by September 15, 2025.

Final essays for the Special Focus section should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words (including abstract, keywords, and bibliography). Completed manuscripts are due January 15, 2026, via the Ecozon@ website, which also provides a style guide and instructions for submission.