In recent years, ecofeminism has played an increasingly important role in a range of disciplines. A new book project, Ecofeminist Intersections, explores the manifold ways that ecofeminism has been used across a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including but not limited to such fields as history, philosophy, religious studies, women’s studies, literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, psychology, economics, geography, and political science.
The editors invite proposals for chapters that explicitly address the intersections between ecofeminism and other approaches or perspectives (for example, posthumanism, postcolonial studies, or queer studies). They especially encourage authors to highlight the unique contributions that ecofeminism, in combination with other approaches, brings to their primary discipline.
When d’Eaubonne coined the word “ecofeminism” in 1974, related ideas were already being discussed in a range of social sciences and humanities. Within anthropology Ortner (1974) argued that the universal devaluation of women relative to men could be explained by assuming that women are seen as being closer to nature than men, while men are seen as being more intimately connected with the “higher” realm of culture. Other disciplines seriously engaged the connections between feminism and ecology only later. It was not until the 1990s, for instance, that literary critics began to examine in depth “‘the woman/nature analogy,’ defined by Warren as ‘the connections—historical, empirical, conceptual, theoretical, symbolic, and experiential—between the domination of women and the domination of nature’” (Carr 2000, 16).
Ecofeminist Intersections will be guided by Quinby’s (1990, 126) observation that “Like the ecology and feminist movements from which it derives, ecofeminism is not devoid of impulses to develop a ‘coherent’ theory.” And yet, Quinby argues, coherence is limited in the face of modern power relations through which domination occurs. By Quinby’s (1990, 123) analysis, ecofeminism is most effective in opposing the oppressions of modern power by fostering a range of practices and theories: “Against such power, coherence in theory and centralization of practice make a social movement irrelevant or, worse, vulnerable, or—even more dangerous—participatory with the forces of domination.” Contrary to this pull toward uniformity, Ecofeminist Intersections will explore the variety of ecofeminisms that have developed over the past forty years.
The editor of Ecofeminist Intersections, D. A. Vakoch, is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, as well as general editor of Lexington Books’ Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series. Vakoch’s earlier edited books include Ecofeminism and Rhetoric: Critical Perspectives on Sex, Technology, and Discourse (2011), “eminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (2012), and (with F. Castrillón) Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment: The Experience of Nature (2014).
Interested authors should send a 300-word abstract, 200-word biography, and sample of a previously published chapter or article to dvakoch@ciis.edu by March 1, 2015. First drafts of full chapters (6000 words) are due by September 1, 2015, and final versions are due November 1, 2015.