Elizabeth Smith

Thesis title:

The Environmental Uncanny: Unsettling the Multispecies Encounter in Contemporary Environmental Poetry

My thesis investigates the disruptive potential of “weird” or uncharismatic organisms, from insects to bacteria to plant life, in contemporary ecopoetics. My research interests include multispecies studies, dark ecology, decolonial ecologies, feminist theory, and posthumanism. I am keen to explore interdisciplinary perspectives, especially from the sciences, and I welcome conversations about unconventional creatures or perspectives.

Research Area

Languages and Literature

Publications

'Beachcombing: Claiming, Disclaiming, and Reclaiming in the Anthropocene'. Informal article in paratextmag.com, December 2020: https://paratextmag.com/2020/12/31/beachcombing-claiming-disclaiming-and-reclaiming-in-the-anthropocene/

Conferences

Presented on “Bodily Immersion or Aesthetic Extraction: Representing Marine Invertebrates in Contemporary Ecopoetics” online for the conference Posthuman Bodies and Embodied Posthumanisms: An Interdisciplinary Conference, organised through M4C and the University of Warwick – Thursday 14th of October, 2022

Presented on “The Posthuman Postlyric of Alexis Pauline Gumbs” for the symposium “Climate Crisis: Lyric Crisis?” organised by Bristol as part of the “Contemporary Poetry and the Environment” series on the 25th of May 2023

Presented on "The Body as a Spaceship: Alien Intimacies with Microbial Collaborators in Adam Dickinson's Anatomic" in the October 2023 SLSA Conference in Arizona

Other Research Interests

Poetics
Ecocriticism
Posthumanism
Feminist theory
Postcolonial ecologies
Environmental humanities
Interdisciplinary perspectives from the arts
Interdisciplinary perspectives from the environmental sciences