Call for Proposals – Humanities for a Warming Globe: Cultural Responses to Climate Change and Sustainability

Vernon Press, an academic publisher of scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences, invites submissions of monographs or edited volumes for its ongoing call for proposals: Humanities for a Warming Globe: Cultural Responses to Climate Change and Sustainability Issues.

Rethinking Climate Change Through Culture

Although often framed as a scientific or technological issue, climate change is a deeply cultural phenomenon. It reshapes the way we think, the way we live, and our relationships with one another and the planet. Researchers across disciplines are invited to publish research that explores these cultural transformations.

While climate change has been widely studied, we are seeking new and fresh proposals that explore how it affects the world through the lens of cultural studies, literature, media, and the humanities more broadly.

Urgent Cultural Questions for a Changing Planet

How is climate change transforming our social imaginaries, cultural practices, or our sense of the future?
What does it mean to live through global warming in historically marginalized or economically precarious contexts?
How are daily life, seasonal rhythms, tourism, work, mental health, or rituals being disrupted by ecological changes?

Across the globe, people are confronting the effects of global warming: heatwaves, droughts, floods, unpredictable seasons, and extreme weather. These changes are interrupting agriculture, migration, education, and longstanding traditions. Communities are being displaced by sea-level rise, fire, or resource scarcity.

Humanities and Social Sciences at the Center of Climate Response

Cultural responses to climate change can reinforce existing inequalities—or open space for new ways of thinking about ecology, economy, and care. The humanities and social sciences are uniquely positioned to explore how narratives, ideologies, values, and symbols shape our understanding of climate and our capacity to respond.

This call for academic proposals welcomes contributions that investigate how climate change is experienced, represented, and contested across different cultural, historical, and social contexts.

Suggested Topics

We welcome proposals that address, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Representations of climate change in literature, film, media, or popular culture

• Climate anxiety and ecological grief: emotional responses and affective dimensions

• Changing seasons and their impact on rituals, traditions, and collective memory

• Postcolonial and decolonial perspectives on the climate crisis

• Global inequalities and climate vulnerability in the Global South

• Ecocriticism and environmental storytelling

• The transformation of tourism, mobility, and leisure in a warming world

• Climate and class: precarious economies and sustainability discourse

• Alternative epistemologies: Indigenous, feminist, and community-based knowledge

• Cultural heritage under threat: disappearance, preservation, and adaptation

• The politics of denial, inaction, and greenwashing

• Speculative ecologies: imagining futures through utopias, dystopias, and beyond

This is an opportunity for both early-career and established scholars to publish a paper or book on climate change and society through a trusted academic publisher.

How to Submit Your Proposal

To respond to this call for proposals and publish research on climate change, please submit a monograph or edited volume proposal (approx. two pages) to: submissions@vernonpress.com

Your proposal should include:

• A summary of the proposed book

• A short biographical note

• (If applicable) A list of similar titles

Download the proposal form
View our proposal guidelines

About Vernon Press

Vernon Press is an independent academic publisher dedicated to advancing research in the social sciences and humanities. We collaborate with authors, academic institutions, and librarians to publish peer-reviewed, high-impact titles.

Our Climate Change and Society series includes recent works such as:

• Extending the Idea of Environment: New Perspectives and Tools for a New Knowledge, edited by Fabio D’Andrea

• Lost Kingdom: Animal Death in the Anthropocene, edited by Wendy A. Wiseman and Burak Kesgin

• Feeling the Heat: International Perspectives on the Prevention of Wildfire Ignition, by Janet Stanley

• Strategic Climate Change Communications: Effective Approaches to Fighting Climate Denial, edited by Jasper Colin Fessmann