This panel examines the intersections of ecological crisis, displacement, and decolonial futures through the lens of postcolonial literatures and cultural practices. By centering narratives from South Asia, the Caribbean, West Africa, and Southern Africa, the panel interrogates how colonial legacies and racial capitalism exacerbate ecological precarity while also highlighting decolonial strategies of resistance, solidarity, and multispecies care. The presentations engage with critical frameworks such as Giorgio Agamben’s “bare life,” Paul Gilroy’s chronotopes, Donna Haraway’s “speculative fabulations,” and indigenous epistemologies to theorize how marginalized communities navigate and reimagine their relationships with land, nonhuman actants, and global capital. Collectively, the panel underscores literature and art as vital sites for envisioning futurities rooted in justice, reciprocity, and ecological repair.

In an era marked by climate collapse, mass displacement, and the uneven burdens of extractivism, postcolonial ecologies offer urgent insights into the material and symbolic violences of modernity. This panel responds to the need for interdisciplinary dialogues that bridge environmental humanities, postcolonial studies, and decolonial theory. By foregrounding voices from the Global South, the session challenges Eurocentric paradigms of ecological crisis and amplifies marginalized knowledge systems that resist capitalist and colonial exploitation. The panel also aligns with MLA’s increasing emphasis on transnational, multilingual, and multidisciplinary approaches, offering a platform to rethink planetary futures through the prism of literary and cultural critique.

The panel builds on scholarship in the environmental humanities that links ecological degradation to colonial histories, as well as decolonial theorists like Walter Mignolo and María Lugones, who emphasize pluriversal worldmaking. Raihan Rahman’s paper extends Agamben’s biopolitical framework to the Anthropocene, resonating with recent work by Elizabeth Povinelli on geontopower. Kuhelika Ghosh’s focus on seed sovereignty dialogues with Vandana Shiva’s critiques of agrocapitalism, while Camille Houle-Eichel’s analysis of communal health practices intersects with Stacy Alaimo’s trans-corporeal ethics. Mpho Molefe’s chronotopic reading of labor migration engages with Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics and Katherine McKittrick’s Black geographies. Together, these presentations advance scholarship by foregrounding literary and artistic forms as sites of epistemic resistance.

The 75-minute panel will feature a 7-8-minutes introduction, four 13-minute presentations (52 minutes total), followed by a 15-minute moderated Q&A session to ensure dynamic engagement. Each speaker will succinctly present their argument, with timekeepers ensuring adherence to limits. The Q&A will prioritize connections between papers, inviting audience reflections on themes like displacement, multispecies solidarity, and decolonial temporality. Presenters will also propose open-ended questions to spark dialogue, such as: How can literature disrupt linear narratives of progress in environmental humanities? What role do nonhuman actants play in decolonial resistance?

Raihan Rahman examines precarity in South Asian climate fiction, framing the Anthropocene as a postcolonial state of exception where capital and sovereignty reproduce ‘bare life.’ His analysis reveals how ecological collapse intensifies displacement while prompting reimaginations of borders and belonging. Kuhelika Ghosh explores Caribbean women’s seed sovereignty in poetry and art, framing seeds as “unruly” agents that evade corporate capture. Her paper highlights decolonial “lines of flight” through multispecies kinship and diasporic memory. Camille Houle-Eichel analyzes Véronique Tadjo’s In the Company of Men, arguing that storytelling fosters human-nonhuman solidarity during health crises. The novel’s polyvocal narrative decolonizes Western biomedicine, proposing communal care as a reparative practice. Mpho Molefe interprets B.W. Vilakazi’s poem “Come, Monster of Steel” as a chronotope of migrant labor under racial capitalism. The train symbolizes entangled temporalities, mediating collective subjectivities that challenge settler colonial economies.

The panel centers scholars from diverse geographic and institutional contexts (South Asia, U.S.A, Canada, Africa, and the Caribbean) working across anglophone, francophone, and indigenous literatures. The presenters employ intersectional methodologies—Marxist, feminist, queer, and ecological—to address varied sites of struggle, from South Asian climate displacement to Caribbean seed networks. Gender diversity is reflected in their focus on women’s labor and care practices, while the inclusion of multiple languages (Zulu, Bengali, French) and genres (poetry, fiction, visual art) resists monolingual canons. By convening early-career scholars whose work bridges activism and academia, the panel embodies the decolonial ethos it seeks to theorize.

In conclusion, this panel offers a timely intervention into debates on ecology and decolonization, demonstrating how literature and art articulate alternative futurities amidst crisis. By weaving together disparate geographies and methodologies, the session invites audiences to reconsider the stakes of postcolonial ecologies—not merely as sites of loss, but as grounds for radical hope.