(Venice 7th-9th May 2020) – The deadline for submissions is Monday 20th January 2020
Link to the webpage of the conference: https://shimajournal.org/conferences/venice/
Wetlands, lagoons and the islands and shorelines within and around them have long been regarded as threshold spaces where earth, sky and water meet in dynamic states of materiality. The essential liminality of these spaces extends well beyond the environmental contexts for human and non-human interactions and involves continuously changing lived spaces.
The island city of Venice and its Lagoon have become an iconic space where the connections between a fragile environment and human adaptations to this can be seen. The cultural imagination of Venice represents it as a space where humans connect with the landscape, themselves and other beings, in constant balance between the longue durée of geomorphology and the evolution of societies. The urban ecosystem of Venice and its Lagoon, with its peculiar island features, is among one of the most studied urban and environmental systems in the world. If the interface between water and land is archetypically realized within the island city and in the islands scattered in the Lagoon, we also recognize that the river and canal network surrounding and flowing into the lagoon is also a complex and contested space, dynamically shaping and reflecting our living with water.
Moreover, new interdisciplinary approaches are required in order to face the challenges of the Anthropocene epoch: climate change, loss of biodiversity, drastic reduction of fish stocks and fishing activity, cultural and social changes, management of mass tourism and watery cultural heritage recovery and protection.
We invite scholars to examine the confluence of waterscapes in Venice in narrative, in politics, in culture, in art and in everyday lives and welcome submissions the following sub-topics:
– Epistemological and Theoretical Discussion concerning the Venetian urban archipelago and its lagoon;
– Examinations of Venice and its Lagoon through the prism of new cultural concepts, such as that of the aquapelago and almost-islandness (as explored in previous issues of Shima in 2012-2019);
– Oral History and narrations about Venice and its Lagoon;
– Embodied engagement with Venice and its Lagoon (e.g. by boating, walking, running, cycling, fishing);
– Environmental and cultural heritage in watery urbanities in the Venice area, with a special focus on traditional boats, way of sailing and rowing traditions;
– Representations of Venice and its Lagoon in cultural texts: art, literature, film, TV, (social) media;
– Waterfront and post-industrial regeneration and its contribution to gentrification or to the community wellbeing;
– Social changes and the everyday discourses on climate change, flood events and ecosystem fragility;
– Tourism in Venice and its Lagoon: excesses and alternatives;
– Non-human perspectives and bio-cultural issues;
– The gigantic approach: from the big ships to the big dikes.
Convenors: Federica Letizia Cavallo, Francesco Vallerani, Francesco Visentin (Ca’ Foscari University). and Philip Hayward (University Technology Sydney)