CFP: Radical Ecology and Plant Studies (Special Issue of the Trumpeter)
John Ryan
Would be great to have some submissions on ecomusicology.
Special Issue of The Trumpeter on "Radical Ecology and Plant Studies"
Academic and popular interest in plants is surging. Over the last fifteen years, the turn to plants in the arts, humanities, and social sciences has inspired new perspectives on the botanical world and human-flora relations (cf. The Vegetal Turn, Marcello Di Paola, ed., 2024). As a transdisciplinary approach to research, pedagogy, and activism, the field of plant studies critiques the dominant narrative of flora as passive and advances appreciation of plants’ multifaceted importance. This dynamic field brings together varied knowledge domains including science, philosophy, theology, anthropology, geography, and literary studies.
Plant studies researchers examine how emerging understandings of botanical life are transforming culture, society, politics, and art. Central to this transformation is vegetal agency, an idea that unsettles the dominant, hierarchical, post-Enlightenment view of plants as insentient automatons responding mechanically to environmental stimuli. In conjunction with shifts in the scientific paradigm, the premise of agency invites new interpretations of—and engagements with—plants in an era of global biodiversity loss (cf. Finding the Mother Tree, Suzanne Simard, 2021).
This Special Issue of The Trumpeter invites contributions at the intersection of plant studies and radical ecology including deep ecology, eco-phenomenology, eco-psychology, ecofeminism, and primitivism, among other areas. The issue aims to promote productive dialogue between these fields on the role of plants, trees, forests, botanical science, and human-plant relations in radical ecological theory and practice. What can radical ecology contribute to plant studies, and vice versa? What would a truly “radical plant ecology” of the future look like?
The Special Issue welcomes original submissions on topics including (but not limited to) the following:
- The role of plants, trees, and forests in the history of deep ecology
- Radical environmental movements and vegetal life
- Indigenous peoples’ philosophies and cosmologies of plants
- Eco-psychology of flora and botanical communities
- Ideas of agency, volition, personhood, and voice in plants
- Vegetal ethics, aesthetics, phenomenology, and semiotics
- Radical plant ecologies in literature, art, and performance
- “New plant science” including intelligence, cognition, and consciousness
- Phytomimetic design interventions as radical ecologies
Submission Guidelines:
Submissions should be submitted via The Trumpeter’s online journal system at http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/ no later than 31 August 2026. Submissions may be scholarly articles, essays, narratives, poetry, book reviews, and film reviews. Submission requirements can be found at http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/about /submissions. Please direct all enquiries to the Guest Editor, John C. Ryan <john.c....@gmail.com>
https://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/announcement/view/39
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