ASLE News

Application Period Now Open for 2016 ASLE Grants

McIntyre Amy

In 2014 ASLE launched a three year pilot program to offer members of the association support through modest grants. Applications for the final year in our three year pilot for these grants are now being accepted, the deadline is July 1, 2016.

ASLE Subvention Grants support innovative projects in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. We are especially interested in projects of a scholarly and/or creative nature that engage with new media, aim at fostering intercultural or interdisciplinary exchange, or seek to bring insights from ...

ASLE-Sponsored Off-Year Symposia in 2016

McIntyre Amy

*This article was updated on February 24, 2016.

In addition to our biennial conference, ASLE sponsors smaller regional symposia in our non-conference years. We are delighted to support three events in 2016, symposia in New Mexico and New York state, and our first ever graduate student symposium in Ann Arbor, MI.  Full descriptions and calls for papers can also be found at the Affiliated Symposia page.

 

Toxic Borders and Bondages: Intersecting Ecology with Capitalism, Racism, Heteropatriarchy and (Dis)possession (Graduate Symposium)

October 21 – 22, 2016 University of ...

ASLE Welcomes New Professional Affiliate SES-Japan

McIntyre Amy

ASLE is very pleased to announce that we have established formal ties with a new Professional Affiliate organization. Since its foundation in 1995, the Society for the Study of Ecocriticism in Japan (SES-Japan) has assisted its members to acquire first-hand knowledge in the study of ecocriticism, which Cheryll Glotfelty described as “the relationship between literature and the physical environment.” SES-Japan holds annual meetings with presentations; workshops; symposia; as well as special lectures by writers and ecocritics from the United States or Canada, scholars ...

ASLE at MMLA 2015

McIntyre Amy

By Lisa Ottum, ASLE/MMLA Liaison, Xavier University

The 57th Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Conference was held on November 12th-15th in Columbus.  Following the conference theme—“Arts and Sciences”—the ASLE-affiliated panel explored ecocriticism as a vibrant nexus of the arts and sciences.

In his paper, “Narcissus in the Wild: Into the Wild and Psychoanalytic Ecologies,” Alexander Menrisky (University of Kentucky) considered the way in which queer ecocriticism and psychoanalytic theory—specifically psychoanalytic theories of primary narcissism—can elucidate literary conceptions of the “wild” and wilderness “escape.”  Focusing on ...

ASLE at MLA 2016

McIntyre Amy

By Clare Echterling, ASLE/MLA Liaison, University of Kansas

The 2016 MLA convention, held January 7-10 in Austin, Texas, was an exciting and energizing conference for those of us working in environmental literary criticism and the humanities. There were a number of ASLE members in attendance and quite a few excellent and diverse ecocritical panels, including those arranged by the newly inaugurated MLA forum for Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities, whose executive committee includes Sharon O’Dair (University of Alabama), Stacy Alaimo (University of Texas at ...

ASLE at PAMLA 2015

McIntyre Amy

By Ted Geier, ASLE/PAMLA Liaison, Rice University

ASLE has established an important presence at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) thanks to the work of my predecessor as ASLE-PAMLA Liaison, Kevin Hutchings, who established the “conference-within-a-conference” that stalwart PAMLA Director Craig Svonkin calls these sessions. Craig is no doubt also responding to the incredible surge in environmental topics across the conference in recent years. I counted no less than 20 other sessions that the average ASLE member might well attend, such as ...