CFP: The Plantationocene Series—Plantation Worlds, Past and Present

Laura Perry Announcement
Announcement Type
Call for Publications
Subject Fields
Atlantic History / Studies, Black History / Studies, Colonial and Post-Colonial History / Studies, Environmental History / Studies, Southeast Asian History / Studies

CFP: The Plantationocene Series—Plantation Worlds, Past and Present

Second submission window: October 15–December 15, 2019

Edge Effects is currently accepting submissions to our series on the Plantationocene. We’re interested in previously unpublished essays (~1500-2000 words), photo essays, and other creative pieces from a diverse array of academic, artistic, and activist perspectives.

We especially welcome creative approaches, perspectives that center the voices and experiences of historically marginalized communities, projects that discuss the limits and erasures of the Plantationocene concept, and research that examines plantations and the legacies of plantations in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Submission details: https://edgeeffects.net/cfp-the-plantationocene-series/

In January 2019, Edge Effects published “Plantation Legacies,” the inaugural piece of our 18-month long Plantationocene series. That essay, and the series as a whole, explores the idea of the Plantationocene—a proposed alternate name for the epoch often called the Anthropocene. Because environmental concerns cannot be disentangled from colonialism, capitalism, and racism, this series investigates agricultural plantation spaces as well as the ways that plantation logics organize modern economies, environments, and social relations. Inspired by the scholars, artists, and activists visiting University of Wisconsin–Madison as part of the 2019-2020 Sawyer Seminar, “Interrogating the Plantationocene,” this Edge Effects series aims to foster conversations that address plantations, past and present, from multiple theoretical and empirical perspectives.

Previous contributions have examined plantations and the Plantationocene in a variety of formats, such as an interview about the environmental histories of Vietnamese rubber plantations, an essay on the cultural politics of plantation-style housing in Hawai‘i, a multimedia exhibit unearthing the material conditions of plantation soil in the American South, and a 30-foot drawing depicting a palimpsest of colonial plantations and more in Cap Haitien. Join Monique Allewaert, Michitake Aso, Christian Danielewitz, Leanne Day, Pablo F. Gómez, Donna Haraway, Rebecca Hogue, Kwynn Johnson, Raina Martens, Gregg Mitman, Sophie Sapp Moore, Bii Robertson, Deborah A. Thomas, and Anna Tsing in contributing to the Edge Effects Plantationocene series.

We look forward to reading your work!