CFP: Gender, Colonialism & Science: A Cross-Cultural Compendium of Primary Sources

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Deadline: December 31, 2022
Resourcing Nature Project

We are seeking contributions to a volume of primary source materials that provide an insight into the many and contested meanings of ‘the environment,’ spanning the period c.1650 to 1950. Our geographic focus is on the regions that were under British imperial dominance, with the aim of exploring how British colonial expansion reframed the meaning of ‘the environment’ in spaces across the globe with relevance to the British Empire. We seek sources that provide insights into alternative and counter-colonial ways of imagining ‘the environment,’ produced by colonized and/or people marginalized by race, gender, disability, sexuality, socio-economic status, and other categories of identity. We welcome engagements with the complex and contested meaning of ‘primary source’ and are open to a wide range of genres, including visual and textual, and sources that are representative of oral traditions and material cultures.

This volume will be part of a 5-volume series, “Gender, Colonialism, and Science: A Cross-Cultural Compendium of Primary Sources” from Routledge. Collectively, the volumes will illuminate gendered knowledge about nature in various cultural contexts from approximately 1650 to 1950. They will offer a readily accessible compendium of primary source materials that span geographies and cultural perspectives, precisely during a period when understandings of nature by women, queer, non-binary, two-spirit and/or transgender persons, became increasingly invisible and important, and yet all the more contested. The guiding principles of the volumes are as follows:

• Inclusion of highly original, cross-cutting, and transdisciplinary sources.
• Variety of source types (textual, material, visual, and auditory) and subtypes (published documents, unpublished manuscripts, popularizations, etc.).
• Provenance of sources spanning geographical regions globally, with a shared connection to the British Empire but collectively achieving cultural diversity.
• Rarity of sources, privileging inclusion of less accessible, lesser-known sources over ones widely known and/or widely accessible.
• Each source preceded by a brief 100-200 word headnote providing necessary context, and followed by recommended further reading.

To contribute an interpretative headnote, please send a 200-word description of the recommended source(s), source producer(s), explanation of the relevance of the source to the series, and a brief bio to volume editors Drs Bridget Keown (BEK76@pitt.edu) Laura Lovett, (LLL49@pitt.edu), and Ayah Nuriddin (an4984@princeton.edu) by December 31, 2022. Future due dates are TBD.

Further info can be found on the project’s website, https://resourcingnatureproject.com