Welcome to The Cicadian

The Cicadian is an interdisciplinary space for creative scholarship, publishing works exploring nature-based relationships, stories of place, belonging and dwelling, and experiential and embodied scholarship rooted in relationships with natural spaces.

We chose the cicada as our namesake because they are an afront to the senses. They are intrinsically bound to place and to time dictated only by nature. They are world-wide cryptic masters described in works dating back to Aristotle and Homer and artistically rendered since the Shang Dynasty. They remind us to reflect upon impermanence and transition, death and renewal, patience, non-linearity and decisive timescales. Their long-in-coming molts remind us that change takes time.

We recognize this is an unprecedented time on our planet when our relationship with nature has never been more fragile. Ecological writing across form and function and rooted in place provides a counter-narrative to reductionist writings that assume nature as the ownable, manageable, exploitable fuel in our drive for infinite, yet unsustainable progress. We read much scholarship that strips the subject and its direct experience of its validity to speak, privileging an abstract, disembodied author/scholar in the guise of objectivity.

We hope to encourage a community of artist scholars and scholarly artists. A place for the intermingling of research, art, humanities and science. Resilient communities are diverse communities. Diversity of thought and expression are bedrock for The Cicadian. We strive to challenge the static and monolithic writings produced in conservative academic spaces.

We publish twice a year aligned to the summer and winter solstice, celebrating the longest and shortest days of the year. These times represent moments of change and also time for reflection.