CFP (Volume 23, 2027): War and Environment in the Space Between: A Collaborative Forum
What kinds of interdisciplinary methods come to the fore when we address the connections between environment and war? What challenges (new or old) do they pose for scholars and fields? How does an environmental lens contribute to our understanding and use of the categories of war and military violence? How do we negotiate the multiple temporalities required in the study of war and environment, and their interrelation? What effects do they have on form, perception, and reading (individual and disciplinary)? We invite abstracts for submissions to a collaborative forum planned for the 2027 issue of The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945.
We envision this forum of short essays (~3000 words each) as exploring these issues across a diverse array of cultural products and forms, each radiating out from a particular case study to engage the broader questions. We invite speculative interventions that explore landscapes, scales, technologies, and encounters (e.g., landmines, war artists, battlefield tourism, mapping, cinematic interventions) making use of the diverse methodologies of literary studies, musicology, media studies, cultural studies, film studies, critical race theory, gender studies, and postcolonial studies, among others, to survey this terrain.
The developmental process of this forum will be collaborative: once we accept 5-6 submissions from abstracts, authors will meet by zoom during the writing phase to discuss their ideas, and read and incorporate references to each other’s work before the forum is submitted as a unit for peer review.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words by October 1, 2025, with papers due on May 15, 2026. Submit abstracts to Claire Buck (cbuck@wheatonma.edu) and Debra Rae Rae Cohen (drc@sc.edu ).
Image Credit: Lot-6411-Box-1-5a: WWI-Activities in France. A shell crater made by the explosion of one of the larger shells. The hole measures about 75 yards or 225 feet in circumference, more than 60 feet in diameter and about 20-25 feet in depth. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. (2017/01/13).