As human actions continue to undermine the sustainability of Earth’s ecosystems and the stability of the planet as a whole, posthumanism seeks to overcome the legacies of humanism by exploring from a non-anthropocentric perspective the ongoing entanglements of humans and nonhumans. A variety of approaches to the human, the nonhuman, the inhuman, and the posthuman have been at the center of recent work in ecocriticism and across the environmental humanities. Many scholars view posthumanism as a paradigmatic change that is not only reconfiguring academic knowledge about naturecultures, but also giving rise to new and unexpected ways of being-together in a more-than-human world.

Ecocritics and other scholars interested in Southeast Asia are also actively engaged in posthumanist inquiries. After all, this is a region where humans and nonhumans have always been deeply entangled, from the indigeneous and ancient traditions of animism to the variegated and blooming creativity of contemporary literature, art, music, drama, film, and other media.

In this international conference, we want to explore and discuss all these naturalcultural entanglements, the various ways in which we can speak of a posthuman Southeast Asia. But we also hope to provide a forum where scholars, researchers, students, writers, artists, and activists based or working on Southeast Asia may contribute to the global conversation on the posthumanities.