Queering Nature Studies

About their research

Eurocentric nature studies have tended to enforce a patriarchal, Christian and colonized worldview that centers biparental (male and female) reproductive capacity and genetic fitness, neglecting the vagaries of sexuality, desire, pleasure that are detached from procreative reproduction, as well as instances of hermaphroditism, self-fertilization and polyamory. Informed by critical readings in nature studies, Indigenous knowledge, queer ecologies, and ethnobotany, this working group will interrogate such epistemologies of the natural world. How might sexual and gender difference be recontextualized as natural undercurrents, rather than as limitations of biological determinism? 

Yet, what are the implications for queer “re-worlding” as it encounters the heteronormative, colonialist understandings of nature and ecology? Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, in their anthology, Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, make the case for a “position not only of queering ecology, but of greening queer politics. The extension of queer into ecology is not, then, simply a question of making nature more welcome to gay inhabitation; it is also an invitation to open queer theory to ecological possibilities and thus produce a queering of ecocultural relations.” (Mortimer-Sandilands) As an initial point of entry, towards Donna Haraway’s insistence on “making kin with the more-than-human,” the working group will investigate plants and fungi that have co-evolved alongside human sexualities and understandings of gender that might be coded as queer. 

The working group would initially be guided by three objectives, which are to: 1) field-scan the observed gender and sexual diversity amongst the more-than-human natural world to de-stigmatize biology for 2SLGBTQ+ audiences whose bodies have been historically maligned by such scientific fields; 2) fertilize nature studies and botanical archives with 2SLGBTQ+ cultural histories to understand the myriad ways plants and queer people are intertwined; 3) seed involvement of queer knowledge stakeholders within sites of nature studies, such as museums, gardens and parks.

1. Why has the study of biology, ecology and nature not included more discussion about queerness (gender variance, non-reproductive capacities, same-sex pleasure) within the natural world (even within contemporary times), and why have more queer communities not been involved in longitudinal ecological studies? 
2. How might sexual and gender difference be recontextualized as natural undercurrents, rather than as “limitations” imposed by scientific legacies of biological determinism? 
3. What are the implications for queer “worldmaking” or “re-worlding” as it encounters the heteronormative, colonialist understandings of nature and ecology?
4. What role(s) might Indigenous and land-based knowledges offer towards expanding definitions within queer ecology? How can queer researchers avoid recreating patterns of colonization in nature studies? 
5. Do sites of nature studies, such as botanic gardens, zoos, natural history museums, herbariums, and nature-oriented special collections, offer anything helpful in reconstituting the methods and means through which biology, biological processes and nature are currently taught (at all educational levels, including community-based education)? 
6. What are community inclusion models that might work within institutional sites/spaces to engage 2SLGBTQ+ communities with nature studies?

• Aaron Mcintosh

• Katja Grötzner Neves, Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthroplogy
• Jesse Arsenault, Associate Professor, Department of English
• August Klintberg, Associate Professor, Art History, Alberta University of the Arts
• Laura Acosta, PhD Candidate, HUMA
• Morris Fox, PhD Candidate, HUMA
• Jacqueline Beaumont, MA Candidate, INDI

• Eli (Jelena) Stankovic, jelena.stankovic@mail.concordia.ca