The Environmental Studies Network of the German Studies Association invites papers for a series of panels on following theme:
"The Metabolism of Cultures: Consumption, Waste, and Desire in the Ecological Humanities"

The anthropologist Mary Douglas noted in her landmark work "Purity and Danger" that social perceptions of endangerment from pollution or efforts to eliminate dirt or excrement rarely correlate directly with objective levels of environmental contamination. Attempts to regulate waste, she argued, were instead creative acts used to enforce particular moral codes, maintain cultural or political hierarchies, or atone for past sins. We invite papers that build on Douglas's insights for a series of panels that explore historical, literary, and ecological meanings of consumption, waste, and desire from a variety of disciplinary and methodological approaches. We welcome papers that examine narratives of scarcity and abundance, analyze shifting definitions of "waste" in German-speaking cultures, conceptualize the poetics of dirt or the aesthetics of toxic landscapes, investigate the intersection of gender, race, and class with discourses of pollution or hygiene, or interrogate the dialectic of pleasure and guilt that has emerged in consumer and post-consumer societies. Please send a 250-word abstract by January 24, 2014 to Thomas Lekan (lekan[at]sc.edu) or Katharina Gerstenberger (katharina.gerstenberger[at]utah.edu).