CFP｜Critical Agrarian Humanities: Farming and World-Making in the Anthropocene｜Concentric  53.2



Call for Papers

Situated at the intersection of deep historical legacies, shifting political-economic formations, and enduring cultural traditions, farming has long served as a material and epistemic site for understanding human-environment relations. For millennia, the vast majority of humanity lived in rural areas and relied on agrarian economies. However, the onset of industrial modernity in the early 19th century also initiated a steadily escalating trend towards urbanization which, especially since the 1950s, has fundamentally transformed population and livelihood patterns around the globe. Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in dense urban centers far removed from their food sources. City folks often imagine farms as places of ecological harmony and focus narrowly on what is served on their dinner plates, overlooking the fact that food production alone accounts for nearly one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture has become both a vulnerable sector and a powerful bargaining chip in trade wars within a structurally interlocked global political economy. Far more than a mode of subsistence, farming re-emerges as both a site of environmental contestation and a world-making practice of active, situated engagement with the more-than-human world.


Critical Agrarian Humanities calls for a study of agrarian literature and culture that explores alternative ways of living with the land, resisting colonial and capitalist extraction, and building socio-ecologically just relations across species and borders. This special issue is particularly interested in literary texts and cultural artifacts which envision farming as a world-making practice for transformative change. How does agrarian literature imagine regenerative practices? How might farming generate conceptual frameworks for re-thinking ecological interdependence, labor, technology, planetary survival, and multispecies care in the Anthropocene? By foregrounding a wide range of agrarian traditions, aesthetics, and movements, this special issue seeks to illuminate how agrarian cultural forms generate conceptual tools, ethical insights, and alternative imaginaries for shaping just and livable planetary futures. Themes may include, but are not limited to:


(1) farmers, land, and community

(2) farming, history, and story-telling

(3) farming, science, and technology

(4) farming, spirituality, and the sacred

(5) farming, stewardship, and multispecies care

(6) farming and human and nonhuman health

(7) farming and environmental disaster

(8) farming, climate change, and the Anthropocene

(9) farming, colonialism, capitalism, and extractivism

(10) farming, exploitation, and extinction

(11) farming, racism, and racial equity

(12) farming, gender, and gender equality


Please send complete papers of 6,000-10,000 words, 5–8 keywords, and a brief biography to concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw by December 31, 2026. Manuscripts should follow the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Except for footnotes, which should be single-spaced, manuscripts must be double-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman. Please consult our style guide at

http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw.


About Concentric

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, indexed in Arts and Humanities Citation Index, is a peer-reviewed journal published two times per year by the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. Concentric is devoted to offering innovative perspectives on literary and cultural issues and advancing the transcultural exchange of ideas. While committed to bringing Asian-based scholarship to the world academic community, Concentric welcomes original contributions from diverse national and cultural backgrounds. In each issue of Concentric we publish groups of essays on a special topic as well as papers on more general issues.


For submissions or general inquiries, please contact us at: concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw.