Framing Souths
Literatures and Languages, Cinema and Photography,
Phototext and New Media
University of Torino
24-26 May 2023
Deadline for submissions: 15th December 2022
In the growing and dynamic field of ecocritical studies, the International Conference Framing Souths aims to explore the different meanings expressed by narratives in cinema, photography, phototext, literature and digital media through a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective, with particular emphasis on human-nonhuman relations in the ecosystems of Southern Italy and, more in general, of the Global South. The conference aims to reflect on the ways in which a deeper ecological orientation and a growing environmental awareness can produce new expressive forms and provide interpretative models capable of revealing other meanings in artistic and cultural productions both in the past and nowadays.
The last few decades have seen several developments in the scientific debate around the agency of images and imaginaries, be them visible or evoked through language, and about the technological devices that allow or amplify their production, circulation and interaction with other social and cultural agents. The idea underlying this fruitful perspective is that meridian images/imaginaries relating to human-nonhuman relations, and the narratives that they feed, have a dynamic force of their own and can act with performative effects in the realm of reality.
In this light, images are not to be considered as simple artifacts that passively reflect fictional relationships, but, in full recognition of their specifically active character, as reality-making agents. Similarly, language – literary and otherwise – is better seen as both bearer and agent of behaviors, interpretations and visions of the future. Not only have cinema and photography iconized human- nonhuman relationships, but also literature and, more broadly, textuality, have contributed to creating images and imaginaries around this systemic way of understanding coevolution. This field of research can be considered as an emblematic relational place to question ourselves – not only in a theoretical sense but also in an empirical one – about the issues raised by the ontological, de- anthropocentric and multispecies turn.
In adopting this approach, the proposed conference is meant as a space open to transdisciplinary dialogue, one that will allow us to explore the different connections between Southern Italy – and, more in general, the very idea of South – and cinema, literature, language, and ecology, and thus to reflect in an extensive and profound way on the different forms through which meridian ecosystems are (and have been) variously expressed, identified and interpreted according to co-evolutionary relational dynamics.
To explore these connections, we have decided to embrace a wide range of perspectives, disciplines and themes – cinema, photography, literature, cultural anthropology, linguistics – which can be synthetically grouped under the term environmental humanities, to reflect on the processes of expression and signification through which the meridian realities can be understood, rethought, transformed, or modeled.
In the complex, multifaceted scenario of contemporary media society, Southern Italy – and, more in general, the South – appears to be a crucial locus to carry out an ecocritical investigation on human- nonhuman relationships and related re-significations through different media, codes and critical and analytical approaches.
The conference is intended to be the starting point of a scientific debate involving different but contiguous discourses on meridian thought and ecology, cinema and photography, literature and linguistics, cultural anthropology and media theory. In this broad scientific context, the conference aims to activate a space for reflection in which multiple research perspectives and boundaries between disciplines can be effectively re-assessed by making them more permeable and open to dialogue.
Submissions may include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Climate change
- Environmental crisis
- Earthquakes, natural disasters and other traumatic events § Environmental activism
- Environmental and relational ethics
- History of co-evolutionary and interspecies relationships
- Ecologism and environmental justice
- Ecolinguistics
- Ecosophy
- Ecopoetics
- Environmental arts
- Ecocinema and environmental cinema
- Human-Nonhuman relationship
- Post-humanism
- Virtual spaces/Real spaces
New methodological and theoretical approaches to the scientific and cultural contexts considered will be received with great interest. The official languages of the conference will be English and Italian.
Abstracts of 500 words maximum, along with a short biographical note (max 150 words), should be sent by email to Alberto Baracco (alberto.baracco@unibas.it) and Carmen Concilio (carmen.concilio@unito.it) for the Scientific Committee, by 15 December 2022.
Scientific and Organizing Committee
University of Torino: Maria Cristina Caimotto, Carmen Concilio, Irene De Angelis,
Paola Della Valle, Sonia Di Loreto, Daniela Fargione, Marita Mattioda, Chiara Simonigh, Silvia Ulrich, Lia Zola
University of Basilicata: Alberto Baracco, Manuela Gieri, Maria Teresa Imbriani
University of Genova: Elisa Bricco, Stefania Michelucci
University of Chieti-Pescara: Paola Brusasco
Turin Interdisciplinary Group of Environmental Humanities Research (Tigehr)