This conference examines the relationship between cultural production and environmental change through the rubric of two related critical terms: flows and floods. A flow – a steady current or stream – is perhaps the defining metaphor of the contemporary world: academic and popular discourse alike is replete with references to the flow of goods, money, energy, information, wealth, resources, and cultures. These flows connect and shape people and places, states and societies, in uneven and unequal fashion. In the current Anthropocene era – where human activity has had significant geological and environmental impact – the stability of these flows is increasingly called into question. The world’s enmeshed currents of wealth, resources and biophysical processes over-flow into destructive literal and metaphorical floods. In times of crisis, flows of energy, people, commodities, and climate become oil spills, ‘tidal waves’ of migrants, flooded markets, and storms. Our conference, therefore, looks to generate discussions on the variety of ways literal and metaphorical flows and floods are represented, registered, and imagined in various forms of cultural production.