To think ecology from the perspective of colonially repressed ideas and practices is to deconstruct the epistemological hierarchy of environmental humanities. The workshop seeks to deepen the dialogue between ecology and decoloniality in the context of indigenous knowledges and practices of the Global South, examining how literary and cultural artists represent, interpret, and foreground their ancient, autochthonous, and local ecological practices.
The workshop seeks to deepen the dialogue between ecology and decoloniality in the context of indigenous knowledges and practices of the Global South, often epistemologically relegated as non-knowledge. The Global South is invoked here as a geographical marker of formerly colonised nations struggling with severe postcolonial and environmental crises, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a systematic occlusion of their indigenous knowledge systems. The theme is a bold signpost to examine how literary and cultural artists, including writers, (oral) artists, filmmakers, (traditional) performers, musicians, among others, represent, interpret, and foreground their ancient, autochthonous, and local ecological practices. The theme also privileges the decolonial lessons that can be harnessed from such practices for planetary balance in the present time.
Scholars from Nigeria, India, Cameroon, Uganda, Germany, and the Netherlands will elucidate various aspects of the topic. Their presentations – centred on African and Asian literary and cultural productions – will discuss the entanglement of ecology and coloniality, but also how literary and cultural artists deploy neglected ecological ideas, practices, natures, as decolonial strategies. How, for instance, their representations of the ecology of indigenous communities serve as colonial counter-discourse in the face of universalised forms of western knowledge systems. To think ecology from the perspective of colonially repressed ideas and practices is to deconstruct the epistemological hierarchy of environmental humanities that tend to undermine how historical processes sometimes overdetermine environmentalism in the Global South. It is above all to decongest the ecological epistemic space of any neo-colonial ‘superior’ knowledge system disguised as universality in favour of a communal, pluriversal knowledge system.
Opening proceedings and welcome address
Prof. Dr Sule Emmanuel Egya | College for Social Sciences and Humanities, Germany
Prof. Dr Friedrich Balke | College for Social Sciences and Humanities, Germany
Indigenous Environmental Knowledges in Cameroon Western Grassland Oral Narratives: An Ecocritical Perspective
Prof. Dr Eunice Ngonkum | University of Yaoundé, Cameroon
Tea break
Cultural Ecology in Decolonial Perspective
Prof. Dr Hubert Zapf | Augsburg University, Germany
Lunch break
Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Nonhuman-Human Relations in Ngas Masquerade Culture: An Eco-metaphysical Approach
Dr Peace Longdet | Federal College of Education, Nigeria|
The Sisyphean Drudge of Decoloniality: Thinning Groves and the Ecoimagination Promise
Prof. Dr Chike Okoye | University of Münster, Germany
Tea break
Ritualizing Plants and Decolonial Bioregionalism in Kodagu, India
Dr Subarna De | University of Groningen, The Netherlands
(Re-)Framing Environmental Thinking: Indigenous Ecologies and Decolonial Praxis
Dr Goutam Karmakar | Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, India
Tea break
Once Upon a Time: Human Relations with the Landscape in Selected Ganda Folktales
Dr Eve Nabulya | Makerere University, Uganda
Confronting Environmental and Epistemic Injustices in the Congo Basin
Dr Nsa Mala | University of Cologne, Germany
Speakers' dinner
Natures and Negritude: Poetry, Coloniality, and Decoloniality
Prof. Dr Sule Emmanuel Egya | College for Social Sciences and Humanities, Germany
Poetry, Water Politics and Decolonial Ecology
Dr John Olorunshola Kehinde | independent scholar, Nigeria
Tea break
Knowing as Belonging: Soil and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
Dr Douglas Kaze | University of Jos, Nigeria
Closing, packed lunch, and excursion to Welterbe Zollverein
Subarna De is an associate researcher at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She is the curator and coordinator of the environmental debate webinar series, SEPHIS Programme. She recently completed her Landhaus Fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich. She researches the transformations of the environment and society, focusing on bioregionalism and indigeneity. Her research is situated at the interface of cultural anthropology, human geography, environmental history, literature, ethnography, and environmental humanities scholarship. She earned her PhD in English Studies (2019) from the Central University of Tamil Nadu, India, supported by the Central University Doctoral Fellowship (India) and Collaborative Research grants from Queen’s University, Belfast, NI. She values collaborative work with non- academic partners to encourage bioregional practices in indigenous landscapes and volunteers as an environmental researcher for the Environment Society of Oman. She can be reached via s.de@rug.nl.
Sule Emmanuel Egya is a professor of African literature and environmental humanities at Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai, Nigeria. He is currently a senior research fellow at the College for Social Sciences and Humanities, Essen, Germany. His research interests include literature and environment, African migration writing, knowledge production in Africa, and decolonial discourse. His current research examines environmental imagination in African twentieth century literature. He is the author of many articles that have appeared in journals in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. His books include "Nation, Power and Dissidence in Third Generation Nigerian Poetry in English" (NISC, 2014, 2019); "Niyi Osundare: A Literary Biography" (SevHage, 2017); "Power and Resistance: Literature, Regime, and the National Imaginary" (SevHage, 2019); and "Nature, Environment and Activism in Nigerian Literature" (Routledge, 2020). He has co-edited "Studies in Scientific and Cultural Ecology" (SevHage, 2021), and "Orality, Textuality, Society: New Perspectives on Nigerian Literature and Culture" (SevHage, 2023). He also writes fiction and poetry under the pen-name E. E. Sule. He is the author of the novels "Sterile Sky" (winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize Africa Region, 2013), and "Makwala" (ANA Prose Prize, 2019); and the poetry collection "What the Sea Told Me" (winner of the ANA Gabriel Okara Prize, 2009).
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Goutam Karmakar is an honorary research associate at the Faculty of Arts and Design, Durban University of Technology, South Africa. He is the recipient of the 2024 Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship and a three-year CHS Postdoctoral Research Position at the Department of English Studies, University of South Africa. Previously, he worked at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa as a National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow and as a visiting scholar at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. He is also an assistant professor of English at Barabazar Bikram Tudu Memorial College, Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, West Bengal, India. He can be reached via goutamkrmkr@gmail.com.
Douglas Kaze is a senior lecturer in the Department of English, University of Jos, Nigeria. He received his PhD from Rhodes University, South Africa, where he studied the poetry of Arthur Nortje (1942-70) from an ecocritical perspective. He has since published and presented papers in African literature and ecocriticism both locally and internationally. He is also widely published in academic journals. His latest publication is “Humans as Waste: Slum Ecology in African Poetry” in "ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment” (2024). He can be reached via dr.douglas.kaze@gmail.com.
John Olorunshola Kehinde is a recent doctoral graduate whose research interests occupy the intersection of human community and nonhuman ecology, and how literature illuminates some of the major ecological challenges of the twenty-first century. His latest publications in "ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Postcolonial Studies and Human Ecology Review" undercut humans’ inclination to environmental abuse, species exclusion and human exceptionalism. He can be reached via johnvitoke@gmail.com.
Anthony Adegboyega Kolawole holds a PhD in English from University of Ibadan, Ibadan. He is a professor of African oral literature at University of Abuja, Abuja, where he had previously held positions as Head of Department of English and Literary Studies, Dean of Postgraduate School, and Deputy Vice Chancellor (academics). His wide-ranging research interests, in which he has published impactful articles, include folklore, comparative literature, stylistics, literary theory, oral literature and medicine, and research methodology. His most critical intervention is his innovative exploration of the therapeutic powers of oral literature in what is emerging as spiritual humanities. His recent publications include “Variations in the Application of the Components of the Oral Performance in Yoruba Chants” in Tydskrif vir Letterkunde (2023); “Oral Literature, Spirituality, and Healing” in Orality, Textuality, Society: New Perspectives on Nigerian Literature and Culture (Essays in Honour of Gboyega Kolawole), edited by Sule E. Egya et al. (2023); “Women in the Evolution of Yoruba Cosmology and the Invocatory Oral Traditional Poetic Forms” in Nigerian Journal of Oral Literatures (2020); and “The Ambivalent Nature of Yoruba Invocatory Chants” in Abuja Journal English (2020). He can be reached via anthony.kolawole@uniabuja.edu.ng.
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Peace Sorochi Longdet is a senior lecturer at the Department of English, Federal College of Education, Pankshin, Plateau State, Nigeria. She obtained her PhD in 2019 from the Department of English, University of Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. She has participated in national and international conferences and published articles in journals. She has won two academic prizes: the best graduating student, Department of English, F.C.E., Pankshin 1999, and the NAWCS prize for the best graduating female student in the Faculty of Arts, University of Jos, 2006. In 2017, she was awarded a grant by the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research Fellowship, USA, for the documentation of Mwaghavul oral literature. Her research interests are computational folkloristics/digital humanities, African Literature (oral and written), Gender Studies, Children’s Literature, and Creative Writing.
Nsah Mala (born Kenneth Nsah), PhD, is a poet-writer, international consultant, foresight practitioner and futurist, and multidisciplinary scholar working across arts, literature and cultural studies; environmental humanities; sustainability science; foresight and futures thinking. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher and coordinator for the University of Cologne’s Hub of the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition, a Hub with a thematic focus on Planetary Wellbeing. Winner of the 2022 Prize for Francophone Theses in Foresight and Futures from Fondation 2100 and Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), Nsah is also a 2023 Next Generation Foresight Practitioner Fellow (Judges' Choice) at the School of International Futures (SOIF). He has published widely in creative writing and academic research, and has been funded by the British Academy, SOIF, and others. His co-edited volume, "Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere", is forthcoming from Liverpool University Press. He can be reached via nsahtoah@gmail.com.
Eve Nabulya is a lecturer in the Department of Literature, Makerere University. She holds a PhD in English from Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Nabulya’s research interests include ecocritical readings of African literature, the interface between literature and rhetoric, oral literatures of Africa, Shakespearean writings, African drama, and literary theory. Nabulya is a former fellow of the African Humanities Program (AHP), African Peacebuilding Network (APN), UMAPS, PANGeA, and is currently working on an Andrew Mellon funded project on literature as archive. She can be reached via evenamala@gmail.com.
Eunice Ngongkum holds a PhD in African literature from the University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon, where she is presently a professor of African literature and culture in the Department of African Literature and Civilizations. Her research interests are in the domains of postcolonial African literature, postcolonial ecocritical culture, diaspora African literature, cultural studies, literary theory and criticism. She has published widely on these subjects in peer-reviewed journals worldwide. Her monographs include "Anglophone Cameroon Poetry in the Environmental Matrix" (Peter Lang 2017), "Dennis Brutus’ Poetics of Revolt" (Cambridge Scholars 2018), and a co-edited volume, "Language, Literature and the Dynamics of Conflict" (Spears Books, 2023). She is also a poet and short story writer.
Chike Okoye, PhD, FAvH, is a professor of poetry and postcolonial literatures with the Department of English, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. He has interests in criticism and cultural studies. He has published in Research in African Literatures, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, African Literature Today, etc. He is the author of "The Mmonwu Theatre: Igbo Poetry of the Spirits". He has also edited "Verses on Change and Violence", and co-edited "Liminal Margins". He has a forthcoming volume, "When Four are Gathered". A proponent of two performance poetry theories, "universalist relativism" and "praxiphonoaesthetics," he is a senior AvH fellow, English Department, University of Münster. He can be reached via cb.okoye@unizik.edu.ng.
Hubert Zapf is an Americanist and co-director of Environmental Humanities Center at the University of Augsburg. He is a founding member of the joint Augsburg-Munich International Doctorate Program Rethinking Environment: The Environmental Humanities and the Ecological Transformation of Society funded by the Elite Network of Bavaria. He has published widely on cultural ecology, English and American literature, literary history and theory. Recent publications include "Literature and Science" (ed.), Special Issue of Anglia 2015; "Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology" (ed.) De Gruyter, 2016; “Ecological Thought in Europe and Germany,” Global History of Literature and Environment, Cambridge University Press 2017: 269-285; "Literature as Cultural Ecology: Sustainable Texts", Bloomsbury, 2016; “Ecology in American Literature” (with Timo Müller), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science, published 20 June 2022; “Posthumanism or Ecohumanism: Environmental Studies in the Anthropocene,” Journal of Ecohumanism 1, 1 2022: 5-17. He can be reached via hubert.zapf@philhist.uni-augsburg.de.
Prof. Sule Emmanuel Egya
Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai (Nigeria) | African Literature, Environmental Humanities
Sule Egya is professor of African Literature and Environmental Humanities at Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai, Nigeria. His research interests include literature and environment, African migration writing, knowledge production in Africa, and decolonial discourse. His current research examines environmental imagination in African 20th century literature. His monographs include:
Sule Egya has co-edited “Studies in Scientific and Cultural Ecology” (SevHage, 2021) and “Orality, Textuality, Society: New Perspectives on Nigerian Literature and Culture” (SevHage, 2023). He also writes fiction and poetry under the pen-name E. E. Sule. He is the author of the novels “Sterile Sky” (winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize Africa Region, 2013) and “Makwala” (ANA Prose Prize, 2019) and the poetry collection “What the Sea Told Me” (winner of the ANA Gabriel Okara Prize, 2009).
Prof. Patricia Plummer
University of Duisburg-Essen | English and Postcolonial Studies
E-mail: patricia.plummer@uni-due.de