Call for Papers
38th Annual Fall Colloquium
Towson University
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Bodily Difference, Elemental Difference: Alterities of Political Ecology
Friday, September 5, 2014*
Félix Guattari has written, “Now more than ever, nature cannot be separated from
culture; in order to comprehend the interactions between ecosystems … we must learn to think
‘transversally’.” To think ‘transversally’ would be to intertwine deliberately the ecological and the
political, thinking these concepts simultaneously in order to do justice to both.
Taking Guattari’s suggestion seriously, how might bodily difference and radical bodily
specificity inform a transversal ecological-political philosophy? How does non-normative bodily
experience— of race, ability, cis and transgender, class, sexuality— open up ways of
approaching ecological-political concerns, of parsing “eco-logy”? How might political
experiences of bodily discontinuity and asymmetry inform philosophical ecologies? How do
philosophical traditions explore the significance and specificity of lived bodies ecologically?
We’d be very interested in papers exploring but certainly not limited to the following topics:
Eco-Political Philosophies of Disability, Universal Access
Existential Phenomenologies of Bodily Alterity
Political Ecology of Vital Materialism
Intersexualities and Ecofeminism
Transgender Ecologies
Environmental Racism and Eco-Imperialism
Eco-Political Philosophies of Factory Farming
Political-Ecological Implications of Neoliberalism
Political-Ecological Implications of Mass Incarceration
Bodies & Body Schemas in Fanon, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Baldwin, Uexküll,
Deleuze, Foucault, Jay Prosser, Eli Clare
Please send prepared for double-anonymous review in one email (1) an attached abstract of
500 words plus (2) in the body of your email detailed contact information
by July 25th* to
and expect to hear back by July 31st from
Dr. Emily Anne Parker eparker@towson.edu
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Towson University
8000 York Road
Towson, MD 21252
*Note date change! Apologies for any inconvenience these date changes cause.