CFP: Intersections of water and oil
Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities
Special Issue December 2026: Water, Oil and Creative Hydrological Research
Editors:
Dr. prOphecy sun, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, psun@ecuad.ca
Dr. Darren Fleet, Simon Fraser University, darren_fleet@sfu.ca
Thematic Call
We all have a story of water, narratives that animate our understanding of the world that situate us in space, fix us in time, and root us in our identities. But what happens when our sense of ecology and surroundings unravels? Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities invites submissions for a special issue focusing on literary, creative and arts-based approaches that engage with environmental ideas of water, oil, abundance, absence, transformation, and human-water relations.
As multiple ecological and social catastrophes collide, we ask for contributions considering how various elements – water, fire, hydrocarbons, minerals, atmosphere, energy, dirt, fossils– shapes our culture, politics, spirit, and even the world itself. In particular, we seek to amplify perspectives that critically engage with ecological issues through emerging interpretive methods and diverse creative practices. As Loveless (2019) articulates, artistic research constitutes geographical acts of resistance and critical inquiry. Alanna Thain describes creative ideations as ongoing, intermingled processes that “animate the strangeness in the everyday” (2017). We are interested in how scholars and artists are beginning to bring these ideas into conversations and linking blue humanities, petroculture and creative practice more broadly.
For this call, we are interested in multidirectional and emergent research that explores, addresses, confronts, and transforms our relationship with water, our perceptions, the environment, climate crisis, terraqueous ecosystems, and petrocultures more broadly. We welcome emergent work from artists, scholars, activists, performance, sound and media arts, and cultural practitioners committed to reimagining sustainable futures, illuminating more-than-human perspectives, challenging anthropocentric paradigms, or showcasing multidisciplinary tensions and ideations.
Possible Topics Include, but are not limited to:
- Artistic responses to water and reflections on the climate crisis and ecological perspectives
- Oil, extraction and surveillance paradigms
- Ecofeminism and queer ecologies
- Indigenous environmental knowledge through creative practice
- Speculative ecologies and climate fiction
- Embodiment, environment, and sensorial artistic explorations
- Community-based participatory arts and environmental activism
- Digital ecologies and environmental media art
- Artistic engagements with policy, law, and activism around the environment
- Multispecies collaborations
- Water, memory and storytelling
- Blue humanities and watery ways of knowing
- Biodiversity, loss in fresh and salt waters
- Oceanography, marine sciences and narratives
- Water capacities and insecurities in the Global South and Global North
- Aquatic mobilities
- Eco migrations and fluidity between oil and water
- Lawless oceans and water regulations
- Ice, atmosphere, and cold
Submissions must be sent electronically by June 15, 2026, through the journal's submission platform: https://ecocene.kapadokya.edu.tr/index.php/ecocene/about/submissions
Receipt of manuscripts will be acknowledged by the submission platform. Questions relating to the special issue can be addressed to the editors.
