Call for Proposals

Winged Geographies: Birds in Space and Imagination

University of Cambridge, 16-17 April 2020

Convenors: Olga Petri (University of Cambridge); Michael Guida 
(University of Sussex)

https://www.wingedgeographies.co.uk/

The deadline for proposals is the 8 November 2020

This workshop will address the question of our evolving spatial 
relationships with bird life. The presence of birds and their song have 
long shaped human experience and conceptualisation of the skies, the 
countryside as well as urban and domestic environments. Birds have been 
collected, traded and re-contextualised across territories. And their 
migrations have inspired new kinds of human connections, both psychic 
and physical. How have birds been part of human efforts to make sense of 
terrestrial and non-terrestrial places and places? Such a question 
implicates all kinds of actors: gardeners, soldiers, pilots, 
naturalists, children, writers and philosophers. Aristophanes' play The 
Birds saw two frustrated Athenians join with the birds to build a 
utopian city in the clouds, a new republic where 'Wisdom, Grace and Love 
pervade the scene'. Steven Feld's work with the Kaluli people of Papua 
New Guinea showed that the avian voices heard in the forest defined an 
entire cultural and spiritual realm. Today, birds increasingly draw 
attention as indicators of environmental crisis. Amid the age of 
Anthropocene, are the much-loved imaginative and metaphorical readings 
of bird life still culturally productive or dangerously retrograde?

This workshop aims to explore cultural geographies shaped by the close 
consideration of birds. We encourage papers of all kinds but you may 
want to consider these themes:

–       Flight and space: seeing with the eyes of a bird, escape from 
terrestrial boundaries, aviation
–       Soundscape: bird song and calls in defining spaces and places
–       Shared space: habitats and landscapes of co-existence and 
extinction
–       Proximity: birds in captivity, birds in the home and garden
–       Mobility and borders: bird trading, bird-watching, distribution 
and migration mapping, ideas of territory and identity
–       Imaginative avian geographies: ideas from art, literature and 
music

Keynote speakers will be Rachel Mundy (Assistant Professor of Music, 
Rutgers University, USA) and Dolly Jørgensen (Professor of History, 
University of Stavanger, Norway). Organisers: Olga Petri, Leverhulme 
Trust Early Career Research Fellow, Department of Geography, University 
of Cambridge; Michael Guida, Research Associate and Tutor, Department of 
Media & Cultural Studies, University of Sussex.

International scholars from geography, history, animal studies, 
anthropology, ornithology, environmental humanities, STS and cultural 
studies are encouraged to participate, although all disciplines are 
welcomed. There will be some financial support for travel for PhD 
students and early career scholars.

The aim is for the workshop to facilitate the development of papers for 
an edited collection or for a special journal edition.

Abstracts of 250 words, with a short biography of 100 words, should be 
submitted by 8 November 2019 here  https://www.wingedgeographies.co.uk/


-- 
Dr. Olga Petri

Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow
JRF Wolfson College
Department of Geography
Cambridge University

07447540971
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