August 6th: Body & Society
A Keynote Address by Dr Julian Dobson will begin the first of three Fridays of Earth(ly) Matters.
You can read the Keynote abstract here. The first Friday panels will include papers by Khanh Nguyen, Hanna Nur Afifah Yogar, Kashfia Ameen, Bogdana Sybikowska, Kat Waters, Melina Lieb, Marietta Kosma, Joyeeta Majumdar. Read the abstracts for their papers below:
Panel 1:
14:30-15:35 BST
Khanh Nguyen:
De-othering the Arboreal Other: Tree-Human Relationships in Richard Powers’ The Overstory and Ali Smith’s Autumn
This paper explores how Ali Smith’s Autumn and Richard Powers’ The Overstory construct and represent cross-species relationships. It argues that both novels seek to bridge the gap between human and tree ontologies by challenging ideological assumptions about non-human otherness. Rather than reproducing the philosophical and scientific privileging of the human self over other modes of being, Smith and Powers bring trees and humans together in relationships where the division between nature and culture, as well as self and other, is destabilised. Trees are revealed to be not so much a stranger but more like a distant relative who possesses qualities usually considered defining traits of humans and other advanced animals, whose being is not only entangled but also enmeshed with human existence. The novels’ de-othering of arboreal otherness carries significant ideological implications. It unsettles notions of human exceptionalism and bounded individualism. Furthermore, Smith and Powers’ exploration of human-tree kinship has the potential to usher in new ways of thinking about the place of mankind within the ecosystem. The paper ends with a note of caution about the risk associated with any attempt to bring trees and humans closer to each other. It contends that an ethical representation of interspecies relatedness is one that challenges the radical division between humans and the nonhuman world while remaining respectful of the autonomy and identity of our nonhuman counterparts.
Bio: Khanh Nguyen holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from Hue University, Vietnam. He is currently pursuing Master’s studies at the Department of English, Aarhus University, Denmark. He has also spent exchange semesters at University of Porto in Portugal and University of York in England. His academic interests include translation studies, world literatures, postcolonial studies and ecocriticism. He aspires to be an ecocritic and environmental humanist who is able to put Eastern environmental philosophies and theories into democratic, egalitarian dialogue with those coming from more established, Western traditions.
Hanna Nur Afifah Yogar:
The Ethics of Non-human Animal Labor: A Case of Monkey-Picked Coconut in Thailand
In the midst of 2020, the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) Asia scrutinised monkey-picked coconut in Surat Thani Province, Thailand. According to this finding, the monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) are working 6-7 hours per day to collect 800-1000 coconuts to be distributed to the Thai coconut-based products factories (particularly “Chaokoh”). This phenomenon leads to the Thai coconut milk boycott in the US, UK, and EU-based retailers. The clash between ethical perspectives and cultural values in monkeys as laborers also creates a dichotomy to define and perceive an understanding of animal rights. This paper analyzes how the entanglement of Macaca fascicularis as nonhuman animal workers under animal welfare ethics and discourse analysis—to scrutinize the different standardization of animal rights and ethics as the center of the issue. The refinement of animal treatment through proper laws and regulations and moral support from all multi-scalar and multi-level actors are urgently needed.
Bio: Hanna is a graduate student taking her Master of Arts degree in Social Science (Development Studies) at the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) in Chiang Mai University. She currently works as a Research Intern at East-West Center Hawaii. Her research interests are environmental humanities, animal welfare, capitalism, and political ecology.
Kashfia Ameen:
What is the Role of NHS employers in mitigating the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on BAME healthcare professionals?
BAME healthcare professionals in the NHS have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 virus through illness and death. In the face of increasing post COVID-19 awareness of health inequality and racial discrimination in the UK healthcare sector, further analysis of the role of employers in addressing the plight of BAME healthcare staff is required. Existing literature does not adequately explore what employers are doing to mitigate the implications of COVID-19 for BAME staff. Additionally, there is lack of research on the effectiveness of healthcare leaders in addressing issues of ethnic disparity in the NHS. In these premises, this study aims to explore the role of healthcare employers in addressing ethnic and cultural disparity to minimize the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on BAME healthcare professionals. The study is based on the empirical case of BAME workers in the NHS. Primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews of female and male BAME NHS staff. Based on the analysis of research findings, this study argues that BAME NHS staff have experienced long-standing health and racial inequities. Although there is some evidence of greater NHS engagement with BAME staff, existing employer strategies are not considerate of employee religion, ethnicity and culture. Accordingly, targeted strategies to reinforce cultural identity, BAME representation in senior management and internal communication considerate of ethnicity are recommended.
Bio: Kashfia Ameen is a first year PhD Business and Management student at Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester. She has completed her MSc Management from the University of Bristol and BA (Hons) Business Economics and Management from the University of Nottingham. She is an experienced academic, being employed for five years as a Lecturer of Management in a leading university in her home country. She is on study leave to pursue her doctoral research. Her research interests lie in governance of labour rights in global value chains and labour standards for female workers in global production networks.
Bogdana Sybikowska:
Climate Change: A Violent Turn
Recent severe weather events and hot temperatures are yet another evidence of ongoing environmental turbulence that is induced by a global climate change. Although natural factors play a major role, on a planetary scale, human interference has become a definitive driver. Floods in Poland or bushfires in Australia – people across the world are already experiencing the consequences. A large number of developing states believe that the main responsibility for mitigating the effects should lie with industrialized countries, in which the emissions of carbon compounds per capita are much higher than in developing ones. At the same time, those are the developing nations that feel the consequences of global warming most acutely. The effects of climate change, as well as other environmental problems, have recently become a catalyst for conflict situations, specifically in the states already destabilized. In this paper, I indicate possible links between climate change and armed conflicts, and verify if there is the expected relationship. I identify main conflict determinants, such as resource scarcity, including water and energy, rising energy demand and migration induced by extreme weather. This research finds its relevance in recent international community’s concerns for security issues caused by the change of climate.
Bio: Bogdana Sybikowska is a young professional in the field of security studies. She is a PhD student at the University of Warsaw and pursues her career in security related fields. She finished a traineeship at the European Commission and is an external security expert in the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Her dissertation focuses on international organizations and the rising scope of their authority in regards to international security.
Panel 2:
15.50-16:55 BST
Kat Waters:
Nation and Ancestral Belonging in Contemporary Landscape Memoirs
This paper examines the presence of narratives of ancestral rootedness in contemporary British nature writing, looking at two recent landscape memoirs, The Grassling (2019) by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett and English Pastoral (2020) by James Rebanks. Both authors seek to establish an ontology of belonging and place that is principally mediated through the long presence of the family. As both authors build up a strong sense of belonging in place on a local scale, the long historical presence of their respective families reinforces this relationship: in the present political climate, it is increasingly relevant to consider how attitudes to belonging are informed by a historical claim (or the lack of one), and how nation, as well as race, intersects with such attitudes. Narratives of ancestral rootedness have clear exclusionary potential, with the implication that those from elsewhere are unable to feel a similarly strong connection to place or to speak for it as authentically. This paper will show that: (i) both authors use an ancestral familial connection to vouchsafe their authenticity as narrators; (ii) the family provides these texts with an alternative framework for belonging that is both older and more ‘authentic’ than the modern nation-state and better able to withstand historical change. Looking at how families provide an anchor for meaningful and enduring ties to place alternative to nation, I propose that this nonetheless utilises versions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘family’ that prioritise ‘indigenous’ belonging.
Bio: Kat Waters is a PhD candidate in the School of English at the University of Leeds. Kat’s research project, ‘Nation and Belonging in Contemporary British Nature Writing’, investigates the presence of the nation in 21st century British nature writing (sometimes referred to as ‘new nature writing’) and how this writing responds to current concerns about exclusionary models of national belonging and identity.
Melina Lieb:
What We Share: Birds and Humans in 21st-Century British Nature Writing
Blackbirds, pigeons, crows – the species we encounter every day might seem so ordinary that we tend to overlook them. Yet it is exactly these common encounters which offer the best starting points to relate to more-than-human nature. Following this assumption, one of the central research questions of my doctoral research is: how do current Nature Writing narratives value the common? Drawing on theoretical insights from Henri Lefebvre into the cyclical structures of the everyday and Rita Felski’s reflections on routine repetition and the shaping of space, my project traces not only the temporal aspects of the everyday, but also the spatial aspects of the familiar and the political and ethical aspects of a shared world. In my study, I focus in particular on non-fiction prose works written in a diary format. My focus is especially on narratives featuring birds, as they not only play a notable role in many Nature Writing works, but are also omnipresent in almost everyone’s life and thus offer fruitful possibilities for connecting with the common. Common birds feature prominently in Mark Cocker’s A Claxton Diary (2019) and Karen Lloyd’s The Blackbird Diaries (2017). Both authors imbue the everyday with new meaning and a fresh vision. As pre-submitted material, I will provide the theoretical background for my analysis. In the live presentation, I will then illustrate with text examples how Cocker and Lloyd construct the everyday in their narratives and how they use the common to highlight the many aspects that humans and birds share: our living spaces, the air we breathe, the soil that nourishes us and even our evolutionary origins.
Bio: Melina Lieb is a PhD candidate and lecturer at the Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz/Germersheim, Germany. Her research focus is on 21st Century British Nature Writing, ecocriticism and ecopoetry. In her dissertation, she considers the role of the ‘common’ in this field of literature, including aspects such as the everyday, the ordinary and the familiar as well as the shared and the political. She has published articles on Arcadiana, the postgraduate blog of the European Association for Literature, Culture and the Environment.
Marietta Kosma:
Accessibility, Equality, Inclusion in Octavia Butler’s Kindred
Questions of normalcy and abnormality are examined through the intersection of the categories of race, class and gender in a system of interlocking oppressions in Octavia Butler’s Kindred which falls in the category of speculative fiction. Numerous tensions are raised around the notions of accessibility, disability, equality and inclusion. Through the trope of time travel, physical and psychological disability of the protagonist, Dana, is exposed. My analysis focuses on the way that disability informs Dana’s experiences in the context of slavery and her positioning in the contemporary discourse of neo-liberalism. Very few scholars perceive Dana’s subjectivity as an actual state of being that carries value both materially as well as metaphorically. The materiality of disability has not constituted part of the larger discourse of the American slave system. Through rendering disability both figuratively and materially, I establish a connection between the past and the present, disability and slavery in an innovative way. The different figurations of space and time exposed through Dana’s time travelling help conceptualize her accessibility in different structures. The formation of Dana’s subjectivity and her positioning in white supremacist America are central elements of this paper. The physical and psychological displacement of Dana, as a black female body exposes her traumatization and the difficulties she faces in order to reclaim her subjectivity in a society burdened by a history of violence and exploitation. Through Butler’s work, I illuminate the possibility of destabilizing notions of normalcy and abnormality through grappling with interlocking society-self making practices of gendered, racial, ethnic, sexual figures of otherness.
Bio: Marietta Kosma is a first year DPhil student in English at the University of Oxford at Lady Margaret Hall. Her academic background includes a Master’s in English from JSU and a Master’s in Ancient Greek Theater from the University of the Aegean. Her research interests lie in twentieth-century American literature, post colonialism and gender studies. Her research focuses on the construction of African American female identity in contemporary neo-slave narratives. She has participated in numerous conferences and has written in a wide variety of journals, newspapers, magazines and in an edited book collection. She is a peer-reviewer for numerous journals and an editor for the Right for Education Oxford and for the Oxford Student.
Joyeeta Majumdar:
Scrutinizing Performance Poetry, Space and Climate Crisis
This paper explores how performance poetry hones the potential of integrating a space for debate and discussion regarding our society at large. My argument is that poetry written to be specifically performed creates a shared space that draws instant attention allowing conversations between poet and audience at the very onset, thereby instigating potential for change and awareness. It interrogates the very nature of such poetry and how it comments upon accessibility, inclusion and equality via the medium of performance. It discusses how in such a performance both poet and audience, audience reception and the space of performance together create a collective self that emerges during such a performance. In this time of crisis, it examines performance pieces where poets have voiced the need for awareness, change and/or discussed the nature of crisis faced by their communities. By studying three poets particularly (whose awareness pieces are noteworthy), such as Prince Ea (writer of ‘Man vs Earth’–an ongoing conversation about the planet); Kathy-Jetnil-Kijiner, whose work dialogues with the issues that the Marshall islands face with her culture’s rich history; and Lindi Note’s ‘A Love Poem To Our Earth’, and how particular social media platforms disseminate poetry worldwide and encourage debate and dialogue, this paper shall conclude on the note that performance poetry harnesses a potential for awareness (in this regard about climate emergency) as and when it is part of a particular pulse in history, delivering a message that harnesses conversation representative of the pulse and needs of its time.
Bio: Joyeeta Majumdar is an independent scholar, recently graduated from St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata, India. She held the post of the convenor of the The Poetry Forum and brought out the journal at Loreto college (2018). Her publication history includes a research paper titled ‘Feminist consciousness in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest eye’ in The Department of English, Loreto College’s journal Critical Imprints (2018), a few select poems in Erothanatos, Volume 4 Issue 2 (2020) and a book titled Living in Similes (2020) with The Writer’s Workshop, Kolkata. She also held the post of the Vice President at her college and won The Principal’s award (2018). Having worked with the Kolkata Literary Festival, she continues to work in the field of research.
Register to attend our conference
across three Fridays in August
Earth(ly) Matters is free for attendees and speakers. It is tailored for postgraduate students and early career researchers but open to everyone – you do not need to be affiliated with a university or a student to attend. By registering, you will be signed up for the full three days. We will send you relevant passwords to access speakers’ papers on our site and links to the live conference days which take place on Zoom August 6th, 13th, and 20th 2021. (Links and passwords to conference material should not be shared with anyone not registered).
SHU Postgrad Humanities Social Sciences Conference 2021 