A Feminist Environmental Humanities Summer Symposium
23 May – 31 May 2022
“How we listen is entwined with how we live and may give insight into
how we tend to ourselves and others.” AM Kanngieser
“If berry plants can both hear and respond to us, what are our responsibilities for
their well-being?” Janelle Baker
“So, the inner ear is both where we find our hearing organ (the cochlea) and our balance organ (the vestibular system). Isn’t it amazing that these two organs float side by side?” Camila Marambio
**APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED**
The FEELed Lab’s inaugural summer symposium, “Listening, Attuning,” features lectures, seminars, and workshops offered by leading thinkers and artists in anticolonial, feminist, and queer environmental research practice.
Methods related to listening and attunement feature strongly in environmental humanities research, as they focus not so much on the world as research object, but our own relationship to, as and within more-than-human worlds. This symposium will examine how these practices might be explored in ways that specifically unsettle colonialism, challenge heteropatriarchal understandings of environmentalism and conservation, and enlist our sensate bodies in ethical, epistemological and political world-making practices – even and especially when “to world-make” might mean to offer care, to be still, to slow down, to withdraw, or to orient ourselves otherwise.
Some of the goals of this symposium include:
- Fostering accessible community for researchers in feminist environmental humanities
- Exploring and advancing collective thinking and practice in relation to listening and attunement
- Providing opportunity for participants to further work on their own projects in a supportive and collective context
Faculty
Dr Janelle Baker, Athabasca University (keynote lecturer)
Dr AM Kanngieser, Marie Curie Fellow and Sound Artist (keynote workshop facilitator)
Dr Camila Marambio, Co-Founder Ensayos (keynote lecturer)
Dr Laura McLauchlan, University of New South Wales (seminar facilitator)
Dr Astrida Neimanis, UBC Okanagan (Director of the FEELed Lab, symposium convenor)
Who should apply?
This symposium invites participation from graduate students, early-career researchers, and artistic practitioners within and outside of academic institutions. A number of spots will be reserved for underemployed researchers and practitioners. A number of stipends will be available to help offset childcare or other accessibility-related costs that might otherwise prevent participation in this event.
What is the format?
Lectures, seminars, workshops and individual consultations will be conducted fully online, according to a PST/AEDT time-zone friendly workday. Outside of the scheduled time blocks, participants will work independently to prepare for and in response to symposium offerings.
Days 1, 2 and 4 include three hours of online plenary & workshop sessions; Days 3 and 5 are “homework days” that include the opportunity for 30 min one-on-one consultations with the
symposium facilitators and the option to attend a virtual FEELed Lab “Littoral Listening” session.
Days 6 and 7 will include a debrief about the independent praxis associated with the listening workshop, as well as 25-minute seminars led by each participant to gather feedback on their
own projects and how they have developed over the course of the symposium.
A full draft schedule is available here
More information about the faculty, lectures and workshops can be found here (check back for ongoing updates!)
Application Process
Please submit (1) a 2-page short CV; and (2) a 1-page (max) expression of interest that outlines:
(a) briefly, your past and present interests in feminist environmental humanities research;
(b) a short description of a project that you are currently working on (e.g. scholarly or creative proposal or publication; activist, artistic, curatorial project) that relates to the theme “listening, attuning” that you believe will be enhanced by participation in the symposium.
Note, you will lead a short participatory seminar for other symposium participants on your project on Day 6 or 7.
(c) whether your current relationship to academia is one of precarious, un-, or underemployment; and
(d) whether your participation would be facilitated by a stipend to help offset childcare or other accessibility-related costs.
In submitting an application, we also ask you to confirm your commitment to attend all sessions and complete associated symposium “homework”, as only a small number of spots (12) are
available.
Please send your application to feeledlab@gmail.com no later than 4 April 2022, 5:00 pm PST.
(Applicants will be notified of the outcome no later than 8 April 2022.)
The FEELed lab 