In the “storied seas” of the Anthropocene, water is never merely a backdrop; it is an archive (Oppermann 2019). Its ebb and flow resemble the turning over of eternal epigraphs. The sustained contact between groundwater and surface water over centuries—and indeed, for as long as the earth has existed—has established persistent waterscapes that give life to and sustain numberless ecosystems and communities. Yet, beyond its sustaining and linear role in waterscapes, comprising both the waters and their beneficiaries, water has been an active site of non-linear, cyclical growth, memory, and change. In parallel with its web-like expansion and reliction, water serves as a medium of transfer and a regenerative site where traumas, histories, and possibilities dissolve and reform.
Consequently, the traumas of the Middle Passage, and figures like the “mad woman in the attic” are not solely buried deep in the human psyche—they are submerged in the waterscape itself. Water, like the rest of the physical world, is articulate; it writes and narrates stories in the interstices of its waves (Oppermann 2013; Iovino and Oppermann 2014; Oppermann 2019). Aligning with this “oceanic ontology,” we view the “living metaphors” that surround water not as mere symbols, but as active physical agents that swallow, reveal, and transform memory. Accordingly, the “sunken ships” of colonial oceanic routes conjure the horrifying stories of capture and enslavement while simultaneously expressing the physical reality of marine life.
This call for papers seeks to navigate the fluid intersections of Feminisms, Ecocriticism, Environmental Humanities, and (De)Coloniality. As Arcadiana Blog, we invite contributions that challenge the terrestrial and aquatic bias found in traditional ecocritical analysis to witness the storied existence of the seas, blending their semiotic fabric with the physical.
Drawing from Astrida Neimanis’s concept of hydrofeminism, we acknowledge that we are all “bodies of water”—fluidally interconnected and leaking into one another. However, this watery embodiment is not a neutral state. For an elaborate critique of our fluxive status as subjects, we can turn to Françoise Vergès to interrogate the “Capitalocene” and the racialized politics of exhaustion that play out in our waterscapes (Vergès 2019, 2024). Who pollutes and toxifies our waters, and whose waters are poisoned? When bridged with the narrative agency of water, can our waters give us answers or show us the way—not just through observation, but through being-with water?
From a parallel perspective, when we layer Neimanis’s hydrofeminism with María Lugones’s “coloniality of gender,” we seek to understand how the masculine tradition of settler colonialism—which prescribed the oceanic routes of the slave trade—also historically mapped the exploitation of the waters that bear the stories of women. Therefore, as Val Plumwood observed, the “feminine closeness to nature” has hardly been a compliment, but rather a justification for mastery and erasure (Plumwood 1993).
Plumwood’s critique would also imply the urgent need to recognize waterscapes and maritime spaces not solely as economic transit zones, but as gendered and extractive ecologies. Yet, such maritime environments remain largely subdued by patriarchal and racial capitalist structures—the same logics that govern the land. This systemic erasure heavily neglects the agency of women, Indigenous populations, and subaltern communities, as well as their knowledge-making practices.
Therefore, extending this call to reimagine hydro-narratives through frameworks of care and reciprocity, we ask: Whether in ecological art, oceanic cartographies, or climate fiction and environmental literature, how can we rethink human agency not as positioned above the waves, but as deeply embedded within them? Moreover, if we view waterscapes as incorporating more-than-human elements—ranging from commodities in trade routes to the toxins, chemicals, and pesticides that now inhabit the waves—how might we reimagine a more-than-human relationality that dismantles the paradigms of mastery Plumwood identifies?
Guiding Questions
We invite students, scholars, multi-disciplinary artists to explore the ways around dissolving traditional binaries around waterscapes. We ask questions like these:
- How do contemporary or historical fictions portray the agency of water?
- How has our relationship with waterscapes evolved as evidenced by literature and art?
- How can “thinking with water” disrupt colonial and patriarchal narratives?
- What is the relationship between “haunted” minds and “haunted” waters?
- How do we decolonize the Blue Humanities? How can we shift focus from the romanticized “blue sublime” to the materialized realities of toxic waters, and the labor of those who live most intimately with the water?
Suggested Subtopics
We welcome submissions that engage with, but are not limited to:
- Hydro-narratives, or Stories of Water
- Waterways and Water Structures
- Hydropolitics; Politics Around Canals, Oceanic Borders etc.
- Water Scarcity: Shortage and Stress
- Toxicity and Waterscapes
- Slow Violence and Waterscapes
- Hydro-Colonialism, or the Coloniality of Water
- Decolonial Feminism and Waterscapes
- Ecofeminism and Marine Conservation
- Water in Elemental Ecocriticism
- Blue Biopolitics & Toxic Bodies
- Gender and Maritime Labor
- Indigenous Epistemologies on Water
- Maritime Ecologies and the Posthuman
- Oceanic Relationality and More-than-Human Maritime Ethics
We invite academic contributions as well as semi-academic, creative, and curatorial work related to the topics outlined above, or that drifts into related currents and uncharted waters fitting the spirit of this call.
Submissions & Deadline
Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis through May 31, 2026.
Please send your submissions to [email protected].
References
Iovino, Serenella and Serpil Oppermann. “Introduction: Stories Come to Matter.” Material Ecocriticism. Ed. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann. Indiana UP, 2014.
Lugones, María. “The Coloniality of Gender.” Feminisms in Movement: Theories and Practices from the Americas. Ed. Lívia De Souza Lima, Edith Otero Quezada and Julia Roth. Transcript Verlag, 2024.
Neimanis, Astrida. Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. Bloomsbury, 2017.
Oppermann, Serpil. “Material Ecocriticism and the Creativity of Storied Matter.” Frame — Journal Of Literary Studies, vol. 26, no.2, 2013, pp. 55-69.
——. “Storied Seas and Living Metaphors in the Blue Humanities.” Configurations, vol. 27, no. 4, 2019, pp. 443-461.
Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. Routledge, 1993.
Vergès, François. “Capitalocene, Waste, Race, and Gender.” E-flux Journal, is. 100, 2019.——. Making the World Clean: Wasted Lives, Wasted Environment, and Racial Capitalism. Goldsmiths, 2024.
