Queer Narratives and Ecological Perspectives in Cultural Studies

Cultural studies at the intersection of queer theory and environmental inquiry has generated a growing body of work that reconfigures our understanding of identity, sexuality and non-human relationality. By attending to non-normative sexualities and gender expressions through the lens of ecological thought, scholars challenge binary frameworks that have historically governed both natural science and social theory. Queer ecological scholarship highlights fluidity, interdependence and the porous boundaries between human and more-than-human worlds, insisting that the same dynamics of marginalisation and resistance that shape queer experience also inform environmental justice. This field reframes traditional narratives of nature as passive backdrop, instead foregrounding living assemblages in which sex, gender and species distinctions become sites of creative possibility. Globally, such work speaks to habitat conservation movements, post-colonial land rights struggles and urban greening initiatives, demonstrating that queer-informed ecological perspectives provide novel tools for understanding biodiversity, multispecies kinship and the politics of care. Practical applications range from community-led habitat restoration projects that embrace non-binary notions of growth, to pedagogical programmes in which plant and animal life are used as lenses for exploring sexual and gender diversity.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Queer Narratives and Ecological Perspectives in Cultural Studies publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in queer narratives and ecological perspectives in cultural studies across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Queer ecology: Interdisciplinary approach that critiques normative binaries and foregrounds queer relations within ecological systems.

Anthropocentrism: Worldview that places human needs and values at the centre of environmental thought, often marginalising non-human agency.

Assemblage: Concept denoting dynamic networks of human and non-human entities whose interactions produce cultural and ecological phenomena.

Trans ecology: Theoretical framework that explores fluidity of identity and species boundaries, emphasising mutability and post-anthropocentric futures.

References

1. Re-imagining Reproduction: The Queer Possibilities of Plants. Integrative and Comparative Biology (2023).
2. Plants as Trans Ecologies: Artifice and Deformation in Bertrand Mandico’s The Wild Boys (2017). Open Cultural Studies (2024).
3. Listening to the Virtual Greenhouse: Musics, Sounding, and Online Plantcare. Open Cultural Studies (2024).