Chapter proposals are invited for the edited book “Women and Nature.” Contributions are welcome from the range of social sciences and humanities, including but not limited to anthropology, psychology, sociology, economics, political science, geography, communication studies, women’s studies, history, and philosophy. 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 May 1, 2015. Proposers will be notified about whether their submissions are accepted for the book by May 15, 2015. For accepted proposals first drafts of full chapters (9,000 – 10,000 words) are due by September 1, 2015, and final versions are due November 1, 2015. Potential authors should already have earned a Ph.D. or other doctorate. All chapters should be previously unpublished.

The philosopher Karen Warren described the analogy between women and nature as “the connections—historical, empirical, conceptual, theoretical, symbolic, and experiential—between the domination of women and the domination of nature” (Carr 2000, 16). Within anthropology, Sherry Ortner 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. By positing an inherent tendency of women to be attuned to nature—to care for it, to recognize their interrelationship with it—we can recognize the value of actions and characteristics typically devalued by the dominant patriarchal culture. However, by identifying these traits as innate—even though they may be environmentally positive—the social and historical factors that have led to women’s oppression can remain obscured. “Women and Nature” will examine multiple historical and contemporary understandings of the possible links between sex, gender, and environment, including the limitations of emphasizing dichotomies such as woman/man and nature/culture.

Confirmed contributors to “Women and Nature” include

- J. Anthony Abbott, Departments of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Stetson University, USA

- Stephanie Baran, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA

- Reena Dube, Department of English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA

- Lauren L. Hill, The Sea Kin, Australia

- Anja Koletnik, Transfeminist iniciative TransAkcija, Slovenia

- Katarina Leppänen, Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

- Swarnalatha Rangarajan, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India

- Luca Valera, Faculties of Medicine and Engineering, University Campus Bio-Medico, Italy

- Sreejith Varma, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India

- Karen Ya-Chu Yang, Department of English, Tamkang University, Taiwan

The editor of “Women and Nature,” D. A. Vakoch, is 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), “Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature” (2012), and (with F. Castrillón) “Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment: The Experience of Nature” (2014).