Call for Book Chapters: “Toxicity in Contemporary Global Fiction: Perspectives from the Environmental Humanities”

Vernon Press invites book chapter proposals for a forthcoming edited volume, “Toxicity in Contemporary Global Fiction: Perspectives from the Environmental Humanities” (editor, David Vivian).

A growing body of fiction across the globe—from novels and films to plays, graphic narratives, and experimental forms—has begun to seriously grapple with the human and environmental toll of industrial agriculture, chemical contamination, and extractive development. In the wake of decades of toxic agrochemical use and the growing presence of microplastics and heavy metals in soils, waters, and bodies, contemporary works of fiction bring increasing focus to the toxic legacies and uneven distribution of environmental harm. While scholars have approached many “toxic fictions” from within their respective national or regional contexts, these works have been less frequently studied as part of a larger global and transdisciplinary context.  

This volume thus proposes to bring together chapters on representations of chemical toxicity in contemporary global fiction, with a particular focus on environmental humanities perspectives. Contributions might assess the impact of pesticides, plastic pollution, post-industrial waste, pharmaceuticals, mining residues, or nuclear fallout. Central to the volume is the recognition that toxicity is not only a scientific or ecological condition, but also a cultural, political, and historical one—shaped by structural factors such as colonial violence, racial capitalism, gendered labor, and infrastructural neglect. The volume seeks contributions that investigate how fiction—broadly defined—narrates, critiques, and responds to toxic exposure and its bodily, social, and environmental consequences.

Possible topics

Chapters will ideally focus on late 20th- and 21st-century topics; they may be comparative or focused on a single case or text; they may address fictional works from any region; and they might treat one or more of the following topics:

• Agrochemical contamination and corporate harm

• Environmental racism and environmental justice

• Environmental and medical humanities perspectives

• Toxicity in colonial, postcolonial, and neocolonial contexts

• Gendered and reproductive dimensions of toxic exposure

• Posthuman, interspecies, or non-anthropocentric approaches

• Representations of “slow violence” and the invisibility of harm

• Experimental or speculative narrative strategies for representing pollution

• The ethics of documentary or testimonial fiction in polluted contexts

• Cross-media or multimodal representations of environmental contamination

Completed chapters should be approximately 5,000 words, including references and endnotes (not exceeding 25 pages). We welcome a range of methodological approaches—including literary analysis, cultural studies, ecocriticism, decolonial theory, and environmental justice studies—and seek contributions from diverse geographical and disciplinary perspectives. The final manuscript will be approximately 300 pages in length.

Organization of the book

Potential chapters may include:

Foreword

1. Toxicity and Coloniality

2. Reading the Bhopal Tragedy: Entanglements, Exchanges, and Technology

3. How Toxic Exposure Engenders Life in Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation

4. The Production and Consumption of Bodies in Cadáver exquisito

5. Toxic Realities in Under the Feet of Jesus

6. Ethical Questions in Documentary Fiction: Plastic Mulch in Farming

Contributor Biographies

Please send chapter proposals of no more than 500 words as a Word attachment to the editor, David Vivian, at dvivian@soka.edu, no later than 5 p.m., Monday, October 6, 2025. Acceptance of proposals will be communicated by the end of October. Completed chapters will be due by Sunday, February 1, 2026. Questions may be sent to dvivian@soka.edu.