Queering the Tropics: A Cartography of Tropical Materialisms, Queer Ecology, and Spectral Tropicality

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.23.1.2024.4079

Keywords:

queer ecology, queering the tropics, queer tropics, spectral tropicality, tropical materialisms, decolonial tropics, Indigenous queer

Abstract

This special issue entitled “Queering the Tropics” explores how queering as a methodology and gender and sexuality as a critical rubric complicate the study of the tropics and conceptions of tropicality. It also engages with how the tropics as a worldly zone, and the notion of tropicality as simultaneously material and imaginary, reconfigure notions of queer sexuality. In other words, our aim has been to study how the tropical might queer queerness itself. This is to attempt to understand queer as a way to initiate and pursue critical encounters with the tropical world—indeed to begin queering the tropics. This first part of the double special issue draws on queer and trans theories and LGBTQIA2+ studies to map encounters with tropical nature, including tropical materialisms, queer ecologies, and spectral tropicality. Decolonial praxis and Indigenous epistemologies also inform this cartography. The papers collected together in this special issue offer a richness that both critiques and expands queer studies.

Author Biographies

Christian Jil R. Benitez, Ateneo de Manila University, the Philippines & Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

Christian Jil R. Benitez is a queer Filipino scholar, poet, and translator. He teaches at the Ateneo de Manila University, in the Philippines, where he earned his AB-MA in Filipino literature. He is currently pursuing his PhD in comparative literature at Chulalongkorn University, under a Second Century Fund (C2F) Scholarship. His critical and creative works have appeared in various journals and anthologies, the most recent of which include Poetry and the Global Climate Crisis (Routledge, 2023) and Here was Once the Sea: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Ecowriting (University of Hawaii Press, 2024). His first book, Isang Dalumat ng Panahon (ADMU Press, 2022), was awarded as the Best Book of Literary Studies/Cultural Criticism in the 41st Philippine National Book Awards.

Gregory Luke Chwala, University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash, USA

Luke Chwala is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash, USA. He writes from the positionality of a decolonial, queer scholar of the environmental humanities whose work most specifically examines the ways in which fictional texts and imaginary worlds offer decolonial solutions Specifically, he specializes in nineteenth-century Gothic literature and British culture as well as decolonial and transatlantic queer studies from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. His most recent work proposes what he has coined as decolonial queer ecologies as a reparative reading strategy of colonial-themed transatlantic Gothic and speculative fiction. He has published work in queer, postcolonial, race, and Gothic studies, including Edinburgh University Press Companions, and the journals eTropic and the Victorian Review. He is co-editor of the University of Wales Press new series, Queer and Trans Intersections.

Anita Lundberg, James Cook University, Australia

Anita Lundberg is an adjunct Associate Professor and cultural anthropologist. Her interdisciplinary ethnographies across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, explore the intertwinings of tropical nature and culture. Her thinking is informed by, material poetics, animist epistemology, and archetypal mythology. Anita’s awards and fellowships include: LIA TransOceanik (CNRS, JCU, Collége de France); The Cairns Institute; Evans Fellow, Cambridge University, UK; Guest Researcher, Maison Asie-Pacifique, Université de Provence, France; Visiting Fellow, Institute of the Malay World and Civilization, National University Malaysia; and Anthropologist-in-Residence, Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia. She has published extensively in academic journals, editing numerous Special Issues. Anita has curated exhibitions in NY, LA, Paris and Sydney, and her own research has been exhibited at the Australian National Maritime Museum, the National Art Gallery of Malaysia, and Alliance de Française. She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow, Cambridge University, UK, has a PhD in Anthropology, an MA in Science & Technology Studies, and a liberal arts BA. After academic stints in Australia and Singapore, she now lives in Bali. She writes in queer solidarity.

S.N. Nyeck, University of Colorado Boulder​, USA

S.N. Nyeck is a multidisciplinary Associate Professor in Africana/Gender Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado Boulder, USA. Trained in political economy of development at the University of California Los Angeles, Dr. Nyeck has pursued two research streams. The first stream is centered on the political economy of development, governance, and global public procurement reform with an interest in social justice, race and gender-responsive schemes in government contracts. The other stream reflects on gender and identity politics. She has written extensively on interdisciplinary topics such as queerness and politics, public policy, gender equity, ethics and religion, public procurement reform, economic inclusion, and human rights. Dr. Nyeck has been at the forefront of queer studies in Africa, her recent book is African(a) Queer Presence: Ethics and Politics of Negotiation (2021). She is affiliated with CU’s Centre for African and African American Studies, is an Adjunct Professor with Mandela University, South Africa, and Extraordinary Professor with the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice, Western Cape University, South Africa.

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Published

2024-08-14

How to Cite

Benitez, C. J. R., Chwala, G. L., Lundberg, A., & Nyeck, S. (2024). Queering the Tropics: A Cartography of Tropical Materialisms, Queer Ecology, and Spectral Tropicality. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 23(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.23.1.2024.4079

Issue

Vol. 23 No. 1 (2024): Queering the Tropics, Part 1: Tropical Materialisms, Queer Ecology & Spectral Tropicality

Section

Introduction

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