Facing global ecological crises driven by the extraction and exploitation of water, rare earths, and minerals, material ecocriticism has turned to “elemental thinking” to grasp the dynamic relationships between natural phenomena and matter. Centering the elements unveils a world constituted not by discrete, static objects but by dynamic, fluid relations that shape humans and the more-than-human. But what, exactly, are the elements “that lie at the taken-for-granted base of our habitats” (John Durham Peters)? Scholars have long debated their elusive nature: While Serpil Oppermann and Serenella Iovino deem them “generative, always becoming, always in flux,” Timothy Morton finds them “strange and wonderful.” As Jeremy Cohen and Lowell Duckert warn, “the elements are never easy”—a sentiment echoed by Stacy Alaimo, who notes they can be “poisons and pollution” when displaced or combined with other elements. 

Historically, ancient traditions—Chinese, Indian, Indigenous, and Western cosmologies—formulated accounts of elemental assemblages and their vitalizing and destructive agency. In contrast, the modern, ever-expanding periodic table often prioritizes rigid categorization over the vivid, unpredictable forces that elements exert.

Our seminar explores these intersecting cultural, scientific, and ecological understandings. How might elemental thinking “encourage a more widespread ecological sensibility,” as David Macauley suggests? Ontologically, how do elements differ from other-than-human agents like plants or animals if they are constitutive of everything? And how do they actively shape human culture and aesthetics rather than serving as mere metaphors and symbols?

We invite interdisciplinary contributions that explore elementality and elemental ecocriticism, including:

• Classical Genealogies: The legacy of classical elements (air, water, earth, fire, aether) from Pre-Socratic philosophy through their transformations in medieval to contemporary literature and thought.
• Global & Indigenous Cosmologies: Non-Western elemental frameworks, including Chinese (Wuxing), Indian ecophilosophies, Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and Global South ecologies.
• Planetary Materiality & Cosmic Kinship: Intersections of the natural sciences and planetary philosophies; relational ontologies of humans as “star-stuff,” “bodies of water,” and “fire’s doing” (e.g., Ursula Biemann’s visual inquiries, Astrida Neimanis’ hydro-feminism, or Anne Harris’ pyro-ontologies).
• Material Media & Infrastructure: How physical media (e.g., paper, ink, film) depend on, intersect with, or reveal the extractive and elemental processes underlying digital and material infrastructures.
• Elemental Aesthetics: Engagements with chemistry, meteorology, geology, and mineralogy across literature, film, drama, visual art, digital media, and performative art.
• Imaginary Ecologies: Elemental motifs, agencies, and warnings in cli-fi, eco-horror, and Indigenous futurisms.