[csaa-forum] Transformations Call for Papers - Rethinking the Seasons

[Warwick Mules]

Transformations is calling for abstracts with a view to publishing for the
following issue:


Rethinking the Seasons: New Approaches to Nature
Cultural Studies is not very good at thinking about the place of nature in
today's technologically mediated life as it's mainly concerned with
³constructivism² or the production of cultural objects, identities and
affects. Nature always comes to foil such things, exceeding them, breaking
them down, returning them to the earth. The problem is how to ³think² nature
in this context. And how does this thinking of nature help us to relate to
the sciences, with their particular way of thinking of nature as
objectified, managed environment.

A number of recent cases in point stand out. One is ³climate change² as it
problematises a hard and fast distinction between nature and culture. It
also upsets an orderly progression and change of the seasons. The seasons
are a cultural construction of nature, and the four European seasons imposed
in the case of Australia on Aboriginal seasons (often 6) are a colonisation
of time. Similarly politicians and journalists referring to recent disasters
as natural and as exhibiting the wrath of &lquo;Mother Nature² is
problematic both for their Janus-faced construction of nature and for not
acknowledging and appreciating ³her² bounty and generosity.

This special issue of Transformations co-edited by Rod Giblett and Warwick
Mules invites submissions from those interested in contributing to the
discussion of the cultural construction of nature around the issues of
climate change, seasonality, disaster, and so forth, as well as broader
theoretical and philosophical issues concerned with the rethinking of nature
as a category of Western thought.

Abstracts (500 words) due 17 June 2011 with a view to submit articles by 16
September 2011. 

Abstracts to be forwarded to:
>  Rod Giblett r.giblett at ecu.edu.au
>  or 
> Warwick Mules at w.mules at uq.edu.au
> 
> 
> 
Dr. Warwick Mules
General Editor  Transformations
http://www.transformationsjournal.org/






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