(Photo Credit: Maksim Isotomin, Unsplash)
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Ursula K. Le Guin’s anti-war novella The Word for World is Forest.
Written during the Vietnam conflict, The Word for World is Forest depicts a distant world invaded by human beings who are desperate for natural resources. It tells the tale of an alien culture that resists the invasion, but is forever changed by the decision.
The Anarres Project for Alternative Futures calls for abstracts for a multidisciplinary virtual symposium that aims to bring together activists, organizers, and scholars to consider the ways in which Le Guin’s tale can help us to diagnose social injustices in the present moment, and to imagine the ways we can catalyze solidarities to achieve more just futures.
Rather than strictly academic discussions or literary critiques, we are looking for presentations that take Le Guin’s novella as a basis for understanding themes such as oppression, patriarchy and toxic masculinity, racial justice, resistance, colonialism/imperialism, nonviolence and armed struggle, environmental justice, intersectional solidarity in the world today. We are especially interested in how the tale might help us develop strategies for mutual aid and community organizing against injustice today.
The symposium will be held on-line over Zoom on Friday, October 14, 2022.
Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words by midnight (Pacific Time) Friday, September 9, 2022 using the submission form below.