Cfc "Edges of Water: Water, Infrastructure, and Environmental Imaginaries in Italy"

Call for Contributions

Edges of Water: Water, Infrastructure, and Environmental Imaginaries in Italy

Co-edited by Alessandro Brunazzo, Serena Ferrando, Marco Gargiulo Scadenza invio abstract: 1 settembre 2026

Italy’s geography and history are deeply shaped by water. Rivers, lagoons, lakes, canals, dams, coastlines, and reclaimed wetlands have long structured the peninsula’s environments, economies, cultural imaginaries, and political conflicts. Water has connected regions and communities, sustained agriculture and trade, inspired artistic and literary traditions, and shaped forms of everyday life across the Italian peninsula. At the same time, water has also been the object of continuous intervention: channeling, damming, draining, reclaiming, containing, and commodifying. From the history of bonifica (land reclamation) and hydroelectric development to contemporary debates on drought, flooding, pollution, tourism, migration, and environmental rights, water remains central to the production of Italian space and to competing visions of ecological futures.
This edited volume proposes a conversation on water as a material, infrastructural, ecological, and cultural force in modern and contemporary Italy. Rather than approaching water solely as a symbolic object or as a site of environmental crisis, the volume examines how specific aquatic environments and water infrastructures shape social relations, political imaginaries, forms of labor, and ecological transformations. At the same time, the collection seeks to explore water as a medium of relation, ecological imagination, collective life, and political possibility: a force that not only exposes histories of extraction, inequality, and environmental violence, but also generates new forms of coexistence, activism, and care.
We suggest framing this relational approach to water by inviting contributors to consider and explore the “edges of water.” An edge can define and delimit something, sometimes by imposing a rigid, artificial separation, but it can also serve as a transitional space, a point of contact, and a site of transformation. It can be both “definite (as defining the perimeter of something) and yet subject to change” (Edward Casey 2017: xvii). “The edge of the sea,” as Rachel Carson writes, is a “strange and beautiful place,” an “elusive and indefinable boundary” always in motion and never the same (1955: 1). At the same time, this very edge of the sea is also a critical zone shaped by phenomena such as coastal erosion, land subsidence, floods, and saline intrusion, to name only a few. The shifting boundary between land and water may also be understood as a space of passage, uncertainty, and transformation. By focusing on the keyword “edges”, we invite contributors to approach water from an oblique perspective and to move beyond any rigid separation between elements. If water is fluid, difficult to contain, and potentially always in transition, what kinds of human and nonhuman relationships does it sustain? Are these relationships forms of constraint or productive forces? What kind of entanglements emerge when we look at water from its “edges”?
Situated within the interdisciplinary framework of the Blue Humanities and environmental humanities, this volume brings into dialogue literary studies, film and media studies, geography, architecture, anthropology, environmental history, and political ecology to investigate how Italian waterscapes are represented, inhabited, contested, and reimagined. Particular attention will be given to the relationship between water and infrastructure—including dams, canals, levees, and reclamation projects—as well as to forms of environmental memory and ecological struggle linked to rivers, lagoons, lakes, deltas, maritime spaces, rain, and flooding.
By foregrounding both the material histories and the imaginative dimensions of water, the volume aims to open a broader conversation about aquatic environments in Italy and their role in shaping contemporary ecological thought and practice.
We welcome contributions from scholars in Italian studies, environmental humanities, film and media studies, geography, anthropology, architecture, literary and cultural studies, and related fields.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Water infrastructures and hydraulic modernity in Italy
• Dams, canals, levees, and land reclamation (bonifica)
• Rivers, lakes, lagoons, deltas, and maritime environments in literature and visual culture
• Water and environmental justice
• Ecological crises: droughts, floods, pollution, erosion
• Water, migration, and mobility
• Hydro-politics and the governance of water
• Water and labor
• Environmental memory and disaster
• Waterscapes in literature, cinema, photography, and contemporary art
• Practices of ecological care and restoration
• Water commons, activism, and collective stewardship
• The materiality and mediation of water

• Nonhuman agency and aquatic ecologies

  Contributions may take the form of scholarly essays or interviews with writers, filmmakers, artists, and activists whose work engages critically with aquatic environments and water politics in Italy.

Essays should not exceed 4,000 words, including notes and bibliography, and should follow MLA style guidelines with endnotes.

Please send a 300–500 word abstract and a short biographical note to alessandro.brunazzo@aya.yale.edu; serena.ferrando@asu.edu and marco.gargiulo@uib.no by September 1st 2026.

The authors of the selected proposals will be asked to submit a 4,000-word essay by Monday, January 11th, 2027.