Call For Papers - Synergies vol. VII, 2026

2025-11-18

Call for Papers - Synergies vol. VII, 2026

The seventh volume of Synergies will host academic articles (6,000 words – 9,000 words, including Abstract, Notes, and References) as well as reviews, interviews, and short creative pieces (1,200 words – 3,000 words).

The issue will be structured as follows:

a/ a special section dealing with “Gardens as Sites of Re-Enchantment”, edited by Vera Alexander (Guest Editor) and Laura Giovannelli [please see below for details]

b/ a miscellaneous section on texts, topics, and authors relating to the broader field of English/Anglophone literatures and cultures

c/ a final section including short creative pieces on gardens and gardening, reviews and interviews

 

Special section: Gardens as Sites of Re-Enchantment: Literary Representations, Cultural Practices, and Encounters with Nature (1830—present)

Gardens are sites to conjure with, both in real, material space, and in their literary representations. Associated with recreation, rejuvenation and inspiration, gardens have featured in texts from the Gilgamesh epic through the Christian Bible into present-day novels, poetry, drama and life writing, as well as streaming platforms, games and social media. As paradigmatic heterotopias in Foucault’s coinage, they assemble human culture and efforts at improvement on the one hand, and elusive more-than-human processes of growth and decomposition on the other, bridging divides while contesting them. Familiar in most cultures, yet elusive and difficult to categorise, gardens have engaged the literary imagination in texts ranging from gardening manuals, poems, coffee-table books to memoirs and political satire and many others.

For this special issue of Synergies, we invite contributions that consider the power of gardens as distinct live spaces that are exempt from many of the hangups and disenchantments that western culture and humanity at large are heir to.

This volume zooms in on a comparatively recent period in what is now referred to as the Anthropocene, the 1830s to the present. Attending to gardens in a time of rapid industrialisation, rise in capitalism and overconsumption, but also of rising questioning of linear progress and search for alternative ways of living in and with nature, this volume will bring together academic, creative and ‘creatical’ contributions that shed light on gardens as sites of imagination and resilience.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

  • Gardens as spaces of freedom and liberation
  • Gardens and/in literary works
  • Gardens and gender politics
  • Gardens and myth
  • Gardens, power, and fashion trends
  • Gardens as counterpoints to modernity
  • Flower symbolism and plants in fiction and poetry: from mimesis to allegory and weirdness
  • Gardens and the emergence of new cultural and critical practices
  • Gardens as forms of artistic expression and symbolic communication
  • Gardening, agency, and processes of recovery and healing
  • Gardens, horticulture, and food
  • Gardens, domesticated space, and national identity
  • ‘Formal’ or ‘wild’, ‘indigenous’ or ‘exotic’?: garden design and nature-culture intersections
  • Botanical tropes and metaphors of cross-pollination
  • Plant-hunting and floral diaspora: from imperial ascendancy to the postcolonial aftermath
  • The gardening press and the evolutions of the gardening advice book between popular and high culture
  • An ecocritical view: garden stewardship in a climate-change era
  • Is there a globalised, posthuman garden?

 

We welcome submissions from scholars and writers across disciplines.

                       

Deadlines for submissions (regarding all the three journal sections):

Abstract submission deadline: 31 January 2026 

Notification of acceptance: 10 February 2026

Submission of completed papers to the editors: 31 May 2026 

Peer-review process (Sections A and B only): June-July 2026

Revised peer-reviewed papers to the editors: 25 August 2026 

The abstract (in English and/or Italian, max. 200 words for articles; max. 50 words for reviews, interviews, and short pieces) and a bio-bibliographical note (max. 150 words) should be sent to:  v.alexander@rug.nl  and laura.giovannelli@unipi.it

 

The journal’s stylesheet can be downloaded here:

https://www.journal.edizioniets.eu/index.php/synergies/about/submissions

 

Please note that this academic journal does not charge authors for the publication of their articles and contributions. All the authors will receive a free PDF and/or paper copy of their work. In addition, after 24 months from the date of publication, all articles on the journal’s website will become freely available for download in an open-access format compliant with the Creative Commons Generic Licence version 4.0 (cc. By 4.0).