CFP Spring 2027 "Environmental Approaches to the Latin American and Caribbean Arts"

According to Édouard Glissant, "The cultures of the world have always maintained relations among themselves that were close or active to varying degrees, but it is only in modern times that some of the right conditions came together to speed up the nature of these connections" (26). Moreover, Glissant focuses on the dialogue of places, the serious and lasting polyphony of geographical and poetic sites across worlds, history, and cultures. His work offers a powerful framework for thinking about the interconnectedness of ecological, historical, and aesthetic processes. It invites us to consider how literature and the arts can create resonant dialogues between places, species, and ways of knowing.

Similarly, in Ecological Enlightenment, Ulrich Beck reflects on the invisibility of environmental issues in industrial societies. This German sociologist proposes an opening to diverse knowledge to make the consequences of environmental degradation visible and truly understandable. He states, "Nature is mute, certainly, and yet plants, for instance, can begin to talk for the attentive observer–quite without speech, entirely from human activity and observation. The natural environment thus becomes a world of signs and symptoms, a mirror, an image for the sensibilities and events that remain closed to the eye by itself (whatever that might be), but not to the knowing eye, which has learned, as Goethe put it, 'to read in the book of nature" (Beck 14). Literature and the arts, in this sense, become vital instruments for interpreting these signs and making legible the stories embedded in landscapes and ecologies.

The abundance of natural resources in Latin America has been essential to the region's economic development since colonial times. The exploitation of these resources has driven environmental degradation, extinction, and displacement of human and nonhuman communities. Latin American artists have not been indifferent to these pressing issues. As Scott DeVries demonstrates in A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature, Latin American writers have expressed concern for the environment since the nineteenth century and continue doing so today. Moreover, since the last decades of the twentieth century, explicit environmentalist writing has emerged, condemning environmental degradation and pressing for political and social changes. This is the case of Gioconda Belli (Nicaragua), Luis Sepúlveda (Chile), Homero Aridijis (México), and Mara Pastor (Puerto Rico), among others. Visual artists and filmmakers—including Alicia Barney (Colombia), Regina Vater (Brazil), and Dhara Rivera (Puerto Rico)—likewise explore environmental themes, revealing the deep entanglements between ecological degradation and systems of coloniality, patriarchy, and capitalism.

As Beck asserts, "It is not the extinction of species that draws our attention to the extinction of species; protest against extinction is essentially also an echo of its showcasing in the major magazines and on the evening television screen. Only if nature is brought into people's everyday images, into the stories they tell, can its beauty and its suffering be seen and focused on" (Beck 14). Literature and the arts make environmental crises visible, shaping the stories we tell about nature, vulnerability, and resilience. They also offer imaginaries for building sustainable futures in which human and nonhuman life may flourish. Importantly, these creative practices amplify the voices of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and rural communities—voices historically marginalized by extractive and exclusionary systems. Attending to their stories not only offers critical perspectives on environmental devastation, but also foregrounds alternative epistemologies and ethics of coexistence.

We invite submissions that engage with environmental questions in Latin American and Caribbean literature and the arts. We welcome academic essays, creative writing, and artistic work that reflect—but are not limited to—the following guiding questions:

• How have Latin American literature and the arts addressed and challenged extractivist interventions across the region?
• How has the transformation brought about by plantations—such as monocultures and greenhouses—been represented and theorized? In particular, how have literary and artistic works engaged with the concept of the Plantationocene, understood as a system rooted in colonial machinery that has reshaped the planet through the exploitation of human and non-human beings and the restriction of their mobility?
• How have climate change, deforestation, pollution, and the environmental consequences of armed conflicts—forms of what Rob Nixon has termed “slow violence”—been perceived, narrated, and contested in Latin American literature and the arts?
• What insights do the literatures and artistic expressions of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities offer regarding the environment, human and non-human beings, and the interconnectedness of life? Can these historically marginalized epistemologies guide those outside these communities toward rethinking relational ethics and alternative ways of engaging with the world?

Submissions are welcome in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Please submit a 300-word abstract and a 100-word biographical note to the guest editors by February 15th 2026:  Claudia M. Paez Lotero (cpaezlot@sju.edu) and Susana L. M. Antunes (antunes@uwm.edu). We will provide feedback on your proposal by 31st March 2026.

Final essays for the research article section should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words (including abstract, keywords, and bibliography). Completed manuscripts are due July 1st 2026. 

 
REFERENCES

Amy de la Bretèque, Pauline, and Natacha D’Orlando. Paysages Littéraires: Nature, Écologie, Écocritique Dans Les Littératures Caribéennes. Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2023.

Barua, Maan, Rebeca Ibáñez Martín, and Marthe Achtnich. “Introduction: Plantationocene.” Fieldsights, 24 Jan. 2023, https://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/introduction-plantationocene . Accessed 23 July 2025.

Beck, Ulrich. Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of the Risk Society. Humanities Press, 1995.

DeVries, Scott. A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature.   Bucknell University Press, 2013.

French, Jennifer, and Gisela Heffes, editors. The Latin American Ecocultural Reader.   Northwestern University Press, 2020.
 
Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation. University of Michigan Press, 2010.
 
Gómez, J. Manuel, et al. Ibero-American Ecocriticism : Cultural and Social Explorations. Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2024.

Heffes, Gisela. “Introducción. Para Una Ecocrítica Latinoamericana: Entre La Postulación de Un Ecocentrismo Crítico y La Crítica a Un Antropocentrismo Hegemónico.” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, vol. 40, no. 79, 2014, pp. 11–34. JSTOR,  http://www.jstor.org/stable/43854807. Accessed 1 May 2024.
 
Lehnen, Leila. “(Re)Thinking Nature: Between Brazilian Cultural Studies and Ecocriticism.” Language, Image and Power in Luso-Hispanic Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, edited by Susan Larson, Routledge, 2021, pp. 103–20.
 
Mckusick, James C. Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology. St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
 
Miguel Bedran, Marina. A Turn to Amazonia: Experimental Art, Indigeneity, and the Rise of Political Ecology in Brazil. Princeton University, 2020.
 
Nisbet, James. “Contemporary Environmental Art.” In The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities. Edited by Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen, and Michelle Niemann. Routledge, 2017.

Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. 1st ed., Harvard University Press, 2011, https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674061194.
 
Monga, Arthur Denos. Littérature, Cinéma et Écologie: L'écocritique à l'aune de quelques médias français contemporains. Editions Universitaires Européennes, 2023.
 
Morton, Timothy. Being Ecological. The MIT Press, 2018.

Ordóñez Díaz, Leonardo. Ríos que cantan, árboles que lloran: imágenes de la selva en la narrativa hispanoamericana. Editorial Universidad del Rosario, Ediciones Uniandes, 2021.

Patrizio, Andrew. O olhar ecológico. A construção de uma história da arte ecocrítica. Trad.    Bhuvi Libanio. Editora da Unicamp, 2023.

Skinner, Jonathan. "Ecotrigger Warning, and: Pine Island Glacier Crack, and: On Returning a Stolen Garment Bag." Colorado Review, vol. 42 no. 3, 2015, p. 195-197. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/col.2015.0100.

White, Kenneth. Le Plateau de l’albatros: Introduction à la géopoétique. Grasset, 1994.

Vakoch, Douglas A., and Patrick D. Murphy. The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature. Routledge, 2023.