CFP: Energy In/Out of Place: A Virtual Energy Humanities Research-Creation Conference

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*Energy In/Out of Place: *

*A Virtual Energy Humanities Research-Creation Conference*

*May 19-22, 2020 *

University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada;

University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; *and*

online around the world

Contact info: [email protected]


*Workshop keywords*:

energy; place; low carbon research; methods; energy transition;
research-creation



*CALL FOR PROPOSALS*

The accumulating crises and injustices of climate change are drastically
reordering the composition and characteristics of places around the world.
Yet, these interlinked harms and pressures vary highly by locale.
Similarly, a global transition to more sustainable forms of energy is
required, but energy transition is highly local and complex, involving new
technologies, behaviors, values, and social forms that must be collectively
imagined and emplaced. Transition will therefore proceed differently in
different locations, but everywhere it will require deep changes in the way
we do things, from business and culture, to academia and politics.

This *virtual research-creation workshop* calls on participants to explore
the many roles of energy in shaping and mediating a diverse array of places
around the world. It asks participants to reflect on sites in and around
where they live and work that carry potential for deep changes in the
energy regimes that dominate everyday life. What historical forms have been
etched into the landscape, infrastructures, and imaginaries of the site?
How does energy traverse geographic and social boundaries, making and
unmaking places in the process? What flows of energy, conversely, might
chart new relations to place? How do global energy systems localize
themselves in different geographies, cultures, and quotidian
experiences—and how might we, as researchers, seek to do the same?



*FORMAT*
*The Energy In/Out of Place workshop will bring together a small group of
scholars and artists from around the world to share their research and
collaborate in an online process of comparative research-creation and
inquiry. *Distributed, site-specific engagements with different energy
places will be shared through asynchronous virtual documentation and
exchanges, in addition to livestreamed panel discussions and keynote
lectures from *Natalie Loveless* <https://loveless.ca/about> and *Sheena
Wilson* <http://sheenawilson.ca/> (University of Alberta) and *Kirby
Calvert* <https://www.uoguelph.ca/geography/Faculty/calvert-kirby> (University
of Guelph).

In April 2020, before the workshop begins, all participants will be given a
research prompt that will direct them through an open ended process of
documenting the engagements between place and energy that are evident at
their site. Documentation may take the form of ethnographic or creative
writing, photography, drawing, audio or video recordings, or other
media. The resulting materials will be uploaded to a website, along with
short critical assessments of the process, in advance of the workshop.

During the week of the workshop (May 19-22) participants will be able to
participate in both live and asynchronous discussions and lectures,
comparing the results and strategies of different participant teams.
Afterwards, participants will have the opportunity to revise their
documentation and write reflections on their findings for publication in an
artist book based on the workshop proceedings.



*SUBMISSIONS*
We encourage proposals from individuals or groups that include the
following:


1. A description of the place that the individual or group would like to
consider, including its past, present, and/or future energy uses,
relations, and flows (~500 words);


2. A short biographical statement from each member of the group that
identifies the skills and methods they will bring to the process of
research-creation (~250 words each);


3. If small grants were to be made available for individuals or groups, a
rough budget outline of how these might be allocated in the research
process (transportation, materials, equipment, etc.) (up to $500 CAD).

Participants may work alone, or in groups of roughly 1-4 collaborators.

The organizers hope to choose teams from a variety of career stages in and
outside of academia with relations to a wide range of places: urban,
suburban, rural, ex-urban; production or consumption; domestic or
workplace; Global South or Global North.

*Proposal submissions are due on December 15, 2019 and can be sent
to [email protected] <[email protected]> as an attached .doc
or .pdf file.*



*A NOTE ON THE WORKSHOP FORMAT*
A large portion of academia’s carbon footprint comes from air travel to
conferences, workshops, and other meetings. International conferences have
grown in number and size over the past fifty years and have become
increasingly important to academic advancement, although they produce
significant amounts of waste and questions of travel funding and global
mobility limit the kinds of people who can travel to these gatherings.
E-conferencing offers a means to simultaneously address these climate and
research equity concerns. As energy humanities scholars, we have a vested
and situated interest in using and promoting these alternatives.

Additionally, we seek to explore the affordances of the virtual conference
format in order to bring more than just scholars’ faces and words to the
screen, but as a value-added proposition in which multi-sensory worlds,
local contexts, and creative forms of representation can be analytically
and rhetorically mobilized within our research. We see virtual conferences
as an opportunity to deepen comparative engagements with the question of
global energy transition, both in this workshop’s content and organizing
principles.

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