ASLE News

VOL. 20, NO. 2 FALL 2008

A Biannual Publication of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment

PRESIDENT'S COLUMN

Expansion of ISLE, Strategic Planning forASLE's Future

While much goes on in ASLE between newsletters, I want to use this space to update you on two exciting, ongoing initiatives on which ASLE's leadership has been working this year. These two projectsin addition to the Victoria conference, of coursehave occupied the majority of our energy and attention these last few months. I hope that you will find them as promising as we do!

ASLE signs contract with Oxford University Press for ISLE publication

We recently finalized a contract with Oxford University Press, who will take over the publication, marketing, and distribution of ISLE starting in January, 2009. Editor Scott Slovic, Managing Editor Jim Bishop, and Book Review Editor Mike Branch recently met with the folks from OUP, and the Reno staff is in the midst of making this transition in the journal's production. The relationship with Oxford will result in more frequent publication of the journal (quarterly, rather than biannually), wider distribution, and advance access to accepted materials. If you have questions about this exciting change, please contact either Scott Slovic, editor of ISLE (slovic@unr.edu), or me (rjohnson@collegeofidaho.edu).

Strategic Planning Process

ASLE's Executive Council continues to work on ASLE's first-ever strategic plan. We have drafted a mission statement for ASLE, which follows. We also have drafted the plan's "goals,"outlining directions and projects for ASLE to pursue in the years ahead. On page two are the 12 "goals" outlined in the strategic plan. By December 1, we will post on the ASLE web sitefor your reviewa series of specific "tasks" to accompany each "goal."

Mission Statement (proposed):

The mission of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) is to promote the understanding of nature and culture for a sustainable world by:

· supporting research, teaching, and creative work in environmental literature, arts, and humanities;

· disseminating the results through publications;

· fostering an active and energetic community through conferences, networks, and programs;

· reaching across national, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries to enhance diversity and inclusiveness; and

· maintaining and advocating ecologically sustainable practices.

see PRESIDENT on page 2

PRESIDENT continued from page 1

ASLE Seeks Candidates for Key Positions

Graduate Student Liaison

We are currently seeking a new Graduate Student Liaison (GSL) for a two-year term. GSLs serve ASLE by representing the interests and concerns of graduate students at meetings of the EC, and they work closely with ASLE's Graduate Mentoring Program Coordinator in shared pursuit of this goal. ASLE officers recently voted to give voting rights to the senior GSL (the person serving the second year of a two-year term). For a full description of GSL rights and responsibilities, see the website at http://www.asle.org/site/about/policies/liaisons/.

If you would like to be considered for a GSL position, please submit a formal letter of application to current president Rochelle Johnson (rjohnson@collegeofidaho.edu) by November 30 for a term beginning in January, 2009. Please include a statement of interest that describes your specific interests in serving ASLE, the length and nature of your involvement in the organization, a description of your professional interests (particularly as they connect to literature and environment), and the names and contact information of three faculty references.

ASLE News Editor

ASLE News is looking for a new editor, beginning summer 2009. Interested applicants are asked to send a one-page cover letter outlining their qualifications and a full C.V. to Rochelle Johnson (rjohnson@collegeofidaho.edu) by December 15^th. For more information about the position, please contact current editor Kathryn Miles (kmiles@unity.edu).

Regional MLA Panel Coordinators

ASLE is seeking volunteers to coordinate panel offerings at the PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association), SAMLA (South Atlantic Modern Language Association), and RMMLA (Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association) meetings each year. Volunteers would be ASLE's official liaison to the organization in charge of organizing a panel each year on ASLE's behalf. The liaison would be responsible for chairing the panel or locating another chair to run the panel at the conferences. This opportunity is a great way to serve ASLE and attend a conference each year. For more information, contact: Donelle Dreese dreesed1@nku.edu.

Strategic Plan Goals:

Based on your comments in the membership survey, the Executive Council has identified the following twelve goals as key to ASLE's success in the future:

1. continue to support and develop ISLE

2. increase the disciplinary and demographic diversity of our membership

3. better serve our graduate student members

4. better serve our nonacademic members and independent scholars

5. sustain our awards in scholarship and creative writing

6. develop new ways to foster innovative pedagogy

7. improve the environmental sustainability of the
organization

8. review the roles and responsibilities of the managing director

9. explore how innovative conferences and symposia can help us fulfill our mission

10. increase the visibility of the organization within and outside of academia

11. engage the public through community-based, K-12, and undergraduate programs

12. investigate how ASLE can help improve public discourse about the environment

The Strategic Planning Process:

We welcome your feedback! As of December 1, 2008, you will be able to view the draft strategic plan through a link on the ASLE web site. You are invited to take a look at the draft and send your comments by January 1, 2009. We look forward to launching the plan in Victoria.

I wish you all a peaceful and productive autumn. With the perilous state of the economy, as well as the uncertainty surrounding the November elections here in the U.S., this seems to be an especially unsettled season. I take heart in knowing that the membership of this organization is so dedicated to doing some good in the worldhowever humble our efforts may be. Thank you for your support this year during my tenure as president, and I look forward to seeing many of you in Victoria.

Rochelle Johnson, President

ASLE News 2 Fall 2008

ASLE Invites Submissions for 2009 Book and Paper Awards

Graduate Student Paper Awards in Ecocriticism and Environmental Creative Writing

ASLEwill once again honor the best work of graduate students by presenting two awards for papers presented at the 2009 conference:

w the best scholarly paper in ecocriticism by a graduate student presented at the 2009 conference;

w the best work of environmental creative writing (any genre) by a graduate student presented at the 2009 conference.

In each category works will be judged by an international panel of judges.

Winners must be members of ASLE or an international affiliate of the association as of May 1, 2009, and should have been enrolled as a graduate student within the previous 7 months.

Both awards include a prize of $100, publication in ISLE, and inclusion in the conference banquet program.

The paper that is submitted for either of these awards must be essentially the same paper that is presented at the conference. Submissions longer than 12 double-spaced pages will not be considered.

Papers must be submitted as an email attachment no later than May 1, 2009. Submissions and any questions should be sent to awards coordinator Tom Lynch, tlynch2@unl.edu. Please send in .doc or .rtf format, not .docx.

ASLE Book Awards in Ecocriticism and Environmental Creative Writing

ASLE will present its second biennial Book Awards at its 2009 conference. The book awards will be presented in two categories:

w the best book-length monograph of scholarly ecocriticism published in 2007 or 2008.

w the best book-length monograph in creative writing (any genre) on an environmental theme published in 2007 or 2008.

NOTE: Anthologies or collections are not eligible in either category. Works of narrative scholarship or works that in other ways blend scholarly criticism with creative writing can only be submitted in one category, which must be indicated in an accompanying letter.

Works may be submitted by either the author or publisher. Works must be in English. Nominees must be members of ASLE or an international affiliate of the association as of January 1, 2009.

Three copies of the nominated book should be sent to:

Tom Lynch, ASLE Awards

Department of English
University of Nebraska
202 Andrews Hall, P.O. Box 880333
Lincoln, NE 68588-0333
Deadline for receipt of all materials is January 15, 2009.

The awards will be presented at the ASLE biennial conference, June 3-6, 2009 in Victoria, British Columbia. Book awards include a prize of $500 in addition to inclusion in the conference banquet program. For further information contact Tom Lynch: tlynch2@unl.edu

ASLE News 3 Fall 2008

ASLE Biennial Conference

More Time at "Island Time"

by Dan Philippon

One of my favorite tasks as a teacher is reading the course evaluations my students submit at the end of each semester. Over the years, I've gotten used to the usual irreconcilable requests: more small groups, fewer small groups; longer papers, shorter papers; more technology, less technology; and so on. What I look for instead are trends: what things are lots of students requesting and few students rejecting, and which of these things might help us better achieve our course objectives?

What holds for courses also holds for conferences, and your responses to ASLE's recent membership survey were invaluable in helping Richard Pickard and me plan ASLE's upcoming conference in Victoria. You helped us choose a date, suggested speakers to invite, and told us that an all-day Saturday session was fine, so long as we started on a Wednesday. But the trend that stood out above all was: "give us more time." Again and again, you told us you wanted three things in particular: longer sessions, fewer papers, and fewer concurrent sessions. So we're doing our best to give them to you, and I'd like to tell you how.

We started by adopting the standard session model for many conferences in the humanities: we expanded the concurrent sessions from 75 to 90 minutes, reduced the number of presentations to three per session, and increased the time allotted for each presentation from 15 to 20 minutes. This new model now provides 30 minutes for introductions, discussion and, in some cases, a respondent, as well as more time for presenters to share their work.

But making this change on its own would have required accepting fewer proposals, as would making the additional changes you requested, such as longer lunches and more time between sessions. Many of you said that was just fine, such as the person who reassured us that "it's okay to accept fewer proposals." But as another survey respondent observed, doing so seems to violate "the ethic of inclusivity ASLE has cultivated," and this is a concern we take very seriously. ASLE has worked hard over the years to make its biennial conferences accessible to a wide range of people, including graduate students, independent scholars, and freelance writers. But since most people don't attend conferences unless they're on the program, it's hard to remain accessible while also being more selective.

Our solution to this dilemma is a new set of concurrent sessions we're calling "paper jams," which will feature seven 8-minute presentations (including self-introductions), followed by 30 minutes of discussion. By providing the opportunity for more people to present the results of their creative and scholarly activity in a single session, these "paper jam" sessions

should help to offset the decreased opportunities for 20-minute presentations. But they will also serve another purpose. Much like improvisational "jam sessions" (thus their name), "paper jams" will provide an especially welcoming venue for work that is more experimental or exploratory, since the point of a paper jam is not to develop an idea fully but to introduce colleagues to something new and then consider it in more detail during the discussion period and after the session has ended. Some paper jam presentations will be abbreviated versions of longer projects, of course, but we hope that others will feature a new or provocative idea that might not yet be developed enough for a 20-minute presentation. Most of all, we hope these paper jams will create the kind of intellectual excitement that roundtables at their best can generate.

When you submit your proposal, you will need to select which of these two formats you prefer. If you select the traditional 20-minute presentation, you will also be asked to indicate whether you would be willing to present an abbreviated version of your presentation as part of a paper jamand we hope you will be, given the limited number of openings that will exist for traditional presentations. Likewise, should you be asked to participate in a paper jam, we hope you will see this not as a judgment on your work but as the necessary consequence of trying to make more time available for conversation, dialogue, and discussion. Finally, although the program committee will try its best to group similar presentations together in paper jam sessions, the increased number of presentations per session may make this difficult, and some paper jam sessions may not have the thematic unity present in traditional sessions. For this reason we strongly encourage the submission of pre-formed panels, which may take the form of either traditional sessions or paper jams.

All of these changes would be worth trying even if they were only a response to the recent membership survey. But like the trends in student evaluations that also meet my goals as a teacher, these changes will also help ASLE fulfill part of our revised mission, which includes the goal of "maintaining and advocating ecologically sustainable practices" (for more on our revised mission, see the President's Column on pg. 1). As the Executive Council agreed at our spring retreat in Idaho, the climate crisis summons us to action, calling us to create an intellectual and creative space where things can happen that would not happen otherwise, in order to justify (at least in part) the carbon emissions associated with our travel. In other words, as several EC members forcefully put it, "no more business as usual."

See Conference on on page 5

ASLE News 4 Fall 2008

Conference continued from page 4

One option for those concerned about carbon emissions is to consider the train. From California or Oregon, Amtrak offers a beautiful trip up the Pacific Coast (http://www.amtrak.com/). From the Northeast, there are fairly reasonable passes on Canada's VIA Rail (http://www.viarail.ca/planner/en_cart_canr.html), including a conference discount (if enough people use this option); it takes more than three days each way to cross Canada by train, but what an experience!

Major airlines fly direct to Victoria, but depending where you're flying from, it may be cheaper to stop in Seattle on the way. You should also consider flying into either Seattle or Vancouver and taking the ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island to take advantage of the scenery.

Field trips, or "what can we do in Victoria?"

We're planning visits to several sites of interest, as well as volunteer options. While there will be a range of activities and opportunities, specific feedback about volunteer interests would be very helpful to us.
Here are some of the likely Friday afternoon options:

w volunteering: speaking to students or seniors, pulling invasive plants, and creek or beach clean-up

w a cycling tour of organic farms, with dinner at a winery or cidery

w a First Nations cultural experience, which could be learning about place-based history or helping with a harvest

w visiting Emily Carr House, Wawaditla (Mungo Martin House) and the Royal BC Museum

w less strenuous options, such as a trip to Butchart Gardens or a scenic bus tour

w kayaking, hiking, bird-watching or mushrooming

For Sunday or overnight options, we're looking at the following:

w volunteering: trail building and ecosystem restoration work

w a trip to Long Beach, Tofino and Clayoquot Sound

w hiking in the old-growth coastal rainforest of the Walbran and Carmanah Valleys

w a visit to Saltspring Island

If there's something you'd like to know about on-the-ground details, please don't hesitate to drop us a line (asle@uvic.ca). We're always happy to hear from you, but we're especially keen to hear about any interest in volunteering ­ since this is the first time ASLE will coordinate local volunteering, we want to make sure the options line up with attendees' interests. We look forward to meeting you all, and we'll see you in June!

We've made other changes, tooincluding new breakfast discussions, informal discussions for attendees with special interests, and several large concurrent discussion sessions for everyone at the end of the conferenceall in the hope that the resulting conversations will create the kind of deep understanding that comes only from personal encounters. And, of course, we are also creating as "green" a conference as possible in terms of our ecological footprint, including offering carbon offsets for our travel.

As with any class, we will not get everything right this time. But I hope you will again tell us what we can do better the next time we ask, so we can continue to improve the gathering that most defines what ASLE is, does, and eventually can become.

"On the Ground at ASLE Victoria"

By Richard Pickard

Some days I tell myself that there's nothing to worry about, because there are still eight months before ASLE comes to Victoria next summer. Usually, though, my calendar tells me there are only eight months before ASLE comes to Victoria! We've done a lot of planning, but there is still lots more to do.

We would like to share information with you about the upcoming conference and to ask for your feedback. A variety of questions have come in from people thinking of attending, and most of them have been on three topics:

Accommodation, or "where should we stay?"

The conference will be held on the university's campus, and we hope that most attendees will stay in the university's residences. For information about the residences, see http://housing.uvic.ca; for information about accessibility for individuals with a disability, see http://housing.uvic.ca/Buildings/index.php#accessible.
Victoria is a tourist destination, with many excellent hotels. We hope to announce a hotel affiliation in the near future, but keep in mind that all of the city's hotels are about a 15-minute drive from UVic. There are numerous B&B's nearby, and using one of those would give you a more personal experience, but be sure to use an online map page (like Google Maps) to confirm locations and distances.

Camping may also be available on or very near campus. If you are interested in camping, please send us an email (asle@uvic.ca) so we can estimate and plan with reasonable accuracy.

Travel, or "how should we get there?"

There's no getting around the fact that Vancouver Island is a long way from the larger population centers of North America, which is one reason we're trying so hard to make it worth the trip.

Proposal Deadline is November 15!

Submit yours at http://asle.uvic.ca/

ASLE News 5 Fall 2008

2008 Election Statements from Candidates for

Vice President and Executive Council

Each autumn, ASLE members are invited to elect a new vice president and two new executive council members. The vice president serves one year as vice president, the subsequent year as president, and the year following as past president. Executive council members are selected for three year terms.

This year the election will primarily be an online voting process. Information on how to vote will be available on the website (www.asle.org) and in an email sent to you in mid-October. Online voting will close on December 1, 2008. If you would like a paper ballot sent to you, please contact Amy McIntyre at info@asle.org or 603-357-7411.

Read the statements from our candidates for vice president and executive council below, make your selections, and vote online or send your ballotpostmarked by December 1, 2008to Kathleen R. Wallace, ASLE Elections, Graduate School, The Ohio State University, 230 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210.

Vice President

Annie Merrill Ingram, Davidson College

I am deeply honored to run for ASLE Vice President. I've been a member since 1992 and consider ASLE the professional organization that best inspires, challenges, nurtures, and supports me. I served ASLE as Secretary-Treasurer from 2000-2004, ending my term by participating on the search committee that hired Amy McIntyre as our first Managing Director. I helped form the Diversity Caucus at the 1999 conference in Kalamazoo and have managed the caucus listserv.

I'm Professor of English at a small liberal arts college in the piedmont of North Carolina, about halfway between the coast and the mountains and smack-dab in the middle of some of the most rampant development in the country. As Coordinator of Environmental Studies and a member of the college's Sustainability Council, I strive to educate my students, colleagues, and administration about environmental issues. Davidson is currently engaging in a broad-based Strategic Assessment; as part of the working group on teaching and learning, I've advocated for increased education for sustainability in the academic curriculum and in a range of co-curricular settings. I'm faculty advisor to the Eco-House, a student residence devoted to reducing its carbon footprint and increasing awareness of how to live more sustainably and mindfully.

I've seen ASLE grow from an upstart youngster into a still vibrant and even more savvy and forward-thinking community with impressive credentials. Our journal, ISLE, will now be published by Oxford University Press. We have nine international affiliates that are also vibrant and active organizations. The 2009 conference in Victoria will be the first biennial meeting held outside the US, which is good news for international participants who have been denied the US visas neces

sary to attend previous conferences. ASLE's increasingly global profile requires us to think even more broadly about our aspirations for the organization.

As we engage in the important work of strategic planning, we face a number of significant issues. The twelve goals that the Executive Council has identified are both sound and ambitious. We need to maintain our current successes, and we can use the strengths of our dynamic, dedicated organization to effect positive change in a world increasingly threatened by climate change, social injustice, overconsumption, and economic inequality. As literary critics, writers, activists, and teachers, we occupy privileged positions of analytical thinking, creativity, outreach, and access. The strategic plan aims to increase our public presence and improve how we serve our members, and I support these goals. Whether I'm elected or not, I look forward to being involved in the process.

One of many things I love about ASLE is that we're a friendly, welcoming, fun bunch of folks. We will need all this good energy and more in the time ahead. We need to inspire others ­ especially those who will diversify the organization, both demographically and disciplinarily ­ to join us in our endeavors. We need to move toward carbon neutrality. We need to use our talents within the academy and out in the world. I am confident that we can do all of the above.

Mark C. Long, Keene State College

I'm thrilled to be considered as a candidate for vice president of ASLE. For more than a decade, the members of this organization have sustained me, personally and intellectually, and I look forward to representing the most exciting academic organization on the planet.

see Election Statements on page 7

ASLE News 6 Fall 2008

My professional life would not be possible without the members of ASLE. When I made my way to college at the age of twenty-eight, I never could have imagined an organization like ours. In the beginning, ASLE helped me bridge a decade of life and work in the mountains of California with the classroom and the university. A few years later, as a graduate student at the University of Washington, ASLE helped shape the contours of my intellectual life. And for the past ten yearsas this erstwhile surfer, mountaineer and fourth-generation Californian has found his way as a professor at a public liberal arts college, and as a father of two children on a rambling old New England farmour organization has inspired, nurtured and challenged me.

Over the years I've contributed to ASLE in a number of ways. First, as a member of the Executive Council, I helped draft the job description for the Managing Director position and assisted with planning and organizing our conference in Boston. Second, I have spent four years facilitating relationships between new and more experienced members of our field as coordinator of our Mentoring Program. Third, I've helped to initiate changes in our conference program, especially aimed to meet the needs of graduate students: designing and participating in a roundtable discussion of academic life; establishing one-on-one meetings in Oregon and South Carolina with ASLE members for those new to our community; designing a pre-conference workshop with John Tallmadge called "Staying Alive: A Workshop for Academic Professionals"; and working with Dan Philippon to create in-conference workgroups on ecocriticism and ecocomposition. Fourth, in an effort to provide more opportunities for members to share their work, I established two standing ASLE sessions at the Northeastern Modern Language Association and organized and chaired more than thirty conference sessions on literature and the environment. And finally, I am working with a graduate student workgroup on the most recent revision of our Graduate Handbook.

My years as a department chair and program director would help me represent memberswhether aspiring graduate students or senior teachers and scholarsas we explore ways to raise financial support for our academic and community projects, continue to emphasize diversity in our community, and build collaborations with colleagues in the environmental humanities, the sciences, as well as with individuals and organizations in our local and regional communities. (My work with Laird Christensen and Fred Waage on our recently published collection of essays Teaching North American Environmental Literature makes available resources for collaborations around learning and teaching.) And I want to ensure that we continue to develop projects with our colleagues around the world. Living in India this year has given me first-hand experience with what it might mean to re-imagine environmental literature and history. In lectures to faculty and graduate students in English, Botany, Zoology, and Ornithology, I experienced the transformative power of our common interests in the environment, as well as the possibilities of

building an international conversation with members of our sister organizations. As vice president, to take one example, I would explore the possibility of off-conference-year electronic symposia to facilitate an international conversation as part of our work to become a more sustainable organization.

ASLE has been blessed with extraordinary leadership since its inception. I am honored to be nominated for vice president and, if elected, will work tirelessly and with enthusiasm on your behalf. Thank you for considering me for this position.

Executive Council

Chia-ju Chang, Brooklyn College

I would like to support ASLE's ongoing expansion as an international platform for scholars, artists, educators and activists. As a member of ASLE's executive council, I will encourage an interdisciplinary approach to ecocriticism as well as the expansion of ecologically-based research into other disciplines such as feminist/postcolonial studies, animal studies, film studies and religious studies. I will serve as a liaison between ASLE-US and the many emerging international branches of ASLE, as I once did for ASLE-Taiwan. As I work to bring more non-Western activists, writers, and scholars to the U.S. to talk about their work, I will also help to set up a venue for US scholars to go abroad to participate in other ASLE activities.

Currently I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Chinese at Brooklyn College, NY, with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University in 2004. My research and teaching interests involve Chinese and comparative animal literature and film, vegetarian ecofeminism, and Buddhist environmental ethics. I have published one article on filmic representation of endangered animals in China, and have another article on the uses of the woman-animal meme in Taiwanese writers' and filmmakers' works forthcoming in a book collection called Chinese Ecocinema.

see Election Statements on page 8

ASLE News 7 Fall 2008

Election Statements continued from page 7

privileged to serve ASLE as a graduate student liaison for three years, and am committed to supporting the student working group's role in our organization. I would be honored to serve our community again, as a member of the Executive Council.

Alan Weltzien, University of Montana, Western

I joined ASLE in themid-1990's: the 1999 Conference at Western Michigan University, ably run by Tom Bailey, was my first and confirmed the fact that I had found a vital new home. When I read issues of the ASLE Newsletter or ISLE, or participate in the biannual conference, I feel renewed about my job and my place in the world. My work has been supported, and my perspectives on writing about the outdoors steadily enlarged,by countless friends in the organization. By running for a position on the EC, I want to serve, at least in a modest way, one of the two professional organizations that has sustained me for the past decade and more. As part of that, I want to help nourish ASLE's growth via its international affiliates as well as its promising new website.

For myself and many, the heart of the matter remains ASLE's vibrant interdisciplinarity. I want to see how the organization can further thatwhat promising new interstices can be articulated between the literary and other domains ASLE addresses: grassroots activism, environmental justice, natural resources policy, and environmental ethics, for example.I also run for the EC as a member of an American minority. As a rural American who lives in a county larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island,with about one person per square mile, I represent a receding demographic segment. I have quite a bit of experience in my adopted region of the Northern Rockies, having resided in southwestern Montana for the past seventeen years. As such, I bring a rural perspective to bear upon ASLE policies. That voice, I would argue, needs to be at the table along with those of my friends who live amidst and write about urban nature.

Thomas Hallock, University of South Florida St. Petersburg

Like many, I came to ASLE after realizing that the group stands for what I had been doing already. With a background in early American studies, I have published a monograph on pastoralism and native-white relations in the early republic (From the Fallen Tree: Frontier Narratives Environmental Politics, and the Roots of a National Pastoral); co-edited a collection of scholarly essays, Early Modern Ecostudies: From the Florentine Codex to Shakespeare; and am near completing an edition of manuscripts by the Quaker naturalist William Bartram. So why ask to serve on the executive council of ASLE? I like the people. I genuinely enjoy the conferences. My research, which focuses increasingly on Florida, puts me in a position to build bridges in regions that have received less attention, such as the U.S. South and Gulf basin. As ASLE has helped define my own role as a teacher, scholar, and bridge between the university and local community, I now ask that I can take my turn sharing in the work.

Amy M. Patrick, Western Illinois University

I came to ASLE by a circuitous route. A geology major, I would have pursued oceanography had I not been browsing the bookstore for good reads and found the book list for Geography 495: "Sense of Place." Nineteen months later, I was sitting at a table in a literature and environment graduate program with like-minded peers and mentors.

Since 2006, as an English professor with interdisciplinary interests, I've taught courses ranging from professional writing to environmental literature and environmental studies. My research is centered in sustainability studies, specifically the ways stakeholders from different perspectives understand and challenge the concept of sustainability and its function in communities. Thus, I was pleased with the conversations in Spartanburg about ways ASLE can be more sustainable, so our practices reflect the values many of us share personally with respect to environment and community. We formed a sub-committee and brainstormed initiatives for the 2009 Victoria conference, and I look forward to working with everyone to ensure that ASLE is not only a welcoming professional community, but also an environmentally sustainable one.

ASLE 2003 was my first conference, yet I realized immediately that this was a unique organization. Each conference since has felt like a homecoming. In 2007 I introduced my first graduate students to ASLE, and they returned home changed, as I had been, by the experience. ASLE's commitment to offering students support, resources, and professionalization opportunities continues to prove invaluable to many of us. I was

ASLE News 8 Fall 2008

ALECC Welcomes ASLE to Canada

I am writing this column on October 2^nd in my bare feet. As far as I can recall, this is the first time in my life I have ever gone barefoot in October, yet even as I love the feeling, I think of the polar bears who are struggling to survive in our melting world. I also worry about the humans whose dwellings and savings are at risk in the recent stock market meltdowns and ponder the connections between these two different forms of melt.

The Executive Council of ALECC, Canada's ASLE affiliate, has just concluded our fall meeting via email. As EC members live all across Canada, including two on opposite coasts, we cannot afford in-person meetings of all nine of us, but writing the meeting notes and responding to one another is labour- and time-intensive. Our treasurer, Jenny Kerber, suggests that we use Skype for future between-conference meetings, and we're going to give it a try.

The ALECC website and newsletter The Goose continue to grow and develop. You can take a gander at them at http://alecc.ca. Lisa Szabo and her co-editors Mike Pereira and Paul Huebener plan to expand our already content-rich newsletter by including more creative writing and one scholarly article per issue. I have begun looking into having The Goose digitally archived at the University of Calgary. And we continue to work on increasing our paid membership so that we can undertake more ambitious projects, such as a conference in 2010.

We are very excited about the ASLE 2009 Conference in Victoria, BC, the first to be held outside the US, the first to be held in Canada. We are eager to show off some of our landscape, our writers and other intellectuals, as well as one of the best English Departments in Canada for the study of literature and the environment and a Creative Writing Department that is thick with nature writers (Lorna Crozier, Patrick Lane, Tim Lilburn, Bill Gaston, and David Leach). Philosopher-poet Jan Zwicky also teaches there.

Victoria is well situated to offer an incredible array of field trips and pre- or post-conference personal explorations. My own plans include a side trip to Saltspring Island, home to an astonishing 108+ writers, and a trip up-island to the wild beaches of Tofino, with organic winery visits en route. Pack your kayak, surfboard, hiking boots, and stemware.

Pamela Banting, President, Association for Literature, the Environment and Culture in Canada (ALECC)

An Introduction to Newly Founded ASLE-Taiwan

ASLE-T received approval from the Taiwan Ministry of the Interior in June this year to officially operate our organization, and approximately 50 scholars have already become members of our organization here in Taiwan. In September, we were excited to become one of the ASLE sister organizations.

Our organization is based at the English Department of Tamkang University, which has become something of a center in Taiwan for ecological studies. More than a dozen MA and PhD students have done their theses or dissertations on issues related to ecological concerns and literature. In addition to the Tamkang Review, which focuses on comparative literary studies, our department has for the past three years published a journal devoted to ecological studies, Ecohumanism. This journal will serve as the official publication for our organization. We have also opened an Ecological Studies Center in our English Department which will develop a website to be linked with other ASLE organizations in the world.

Our department has also hosted four international ecological conferences, the last being in May of 2008. Among the keynote speakers were Profs. Scott Slovic, Patrick Murphy, Michael Zimmerman, Joni Adamson, and Kate Rigby. Many renowned scholars in ecocriticism also attended, including Christa Grewe-Volpp, Serenella Iovino, Masami Yuki, Agnes S.K.Yeow, Masako Matsuda, Nicholas A. Kaldis, Shin Yamashiro, and Lili Song. About 200 local scholars and graduate students actively participated in the two-day conference. In the future, we will be participating with the University of Nagasaki, Japan, in co-hosting international ecological conferences.

In October, we will hold an organizational meeting to elect officers and pass regulations. With the establishment of ASLE-Taiwan, we will continue to promote ecological education and research in Taiwan, and look forward to strengthening academic collaboration with other ASLE organizations around the world.

Peter Huang, Tamkang University

ASLE News 9 Fall 2008

The Graduate Student Page

by Paul Bogard and Angela Waldie

Greetings! We wanted to let you know about what we've been cooking up in our little Graduate Student Liaison (GSL) kitchen lately:

Open Graduate Student Liaison Position

We need a new GSL! Paul's term comes to an end at the beginning of 2009. There's an announcement of this position on page 2, but we would like to put in a good word for this experience. In addition to the riches, fast cars, and fancy clothes ... oh, wait, that's the wrong job. In addition to the chance to work closely with the ASLE Executive Council, advocate for the significance of graduate students and their concerns within ASLE, and add another service line to your cv, being a GSL gives you a chance to meet many great people who share your interests in ecocriticism, scholarly and creative writing, the outdoors, and so much more. We heartily encourage you to apply.

GSL Working Group

We are always soliciting volunteers for the Graduate Student Working Group. This is a great way to get involved with ASLE from the comfort of your own computer. The working group meets over email periodically to discuss issues pertinent to graduate students, plan professionalization and social opportunities for the upcoming conference, and share ideas. Please let us know if you'd like to join.

2009 Conference Panels

As we eagerly await the chance to reconnect with fellow ASLE members in Victoria this coming June, we are in the midst of organizing opportunities for graduate professionalization and networking:

·A pre-conference workshop with Mike Branch will allow grad students to gain practical experience and advice in preparing for the job market. We will discuss issues such as when to go on the market and how to define the scope of your search, as well as attempting to demystify the interview process. We will consider a variety of documents generally submitted as part of an application package, including the job letter, CV, statement of teaching philosophy, and dissertation abstract.

·Given the tremendous success of the graduate student professionalization panels in Spartanburg, we are currently planning two professionalization panels for the Victoria conference. The first will focus on publications, and will feature panelists who will speak to a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary publication opportunities. The second panel will focus on the range of jobs available to ecocritical scholars.

Graduate Student Handbook Update

Our revision of the ASLE Graduate Student Handbook is coming along well. Through the enthusiastic efforts of the working group, we have compiled revised lists of web resources and graduate program descriptions. Thanks to all of you who have submitted program descriptions, and we thank you in advance for your continuing contributions as we revise the "Syllabi Collection" and the section providing advice from the membership.

Please send us your thoughts on any of these projects, as well as suggestions for additional initiatives for graduate students within ASLE. Contact Graduate Student Liaisons Paul Bogard (pbogard@northland.edu) and Angela Waldie (arwaldie@ucalgary.ca) with your comments, questions, or concerns. We hope you are enjoying autumn, and look forward to seeing you next spring in Victoria.

ASLE Defended

Congratulations to Erica Marie Hannickel, who successfully defended her dissertation in the Department of American Studies at the University of Iowa. Entitled, "An Imperial Vineland: The Culture of the Grape in Nineteenth Century America," Hannickel's study was directed by Laura Rigal and included a committee of Claire Fox, John Raeburn, Jim Throgmorton, and Barbara Eckstein.

If you or one of your doctoral students has recently defended a dissertation, we want to know about it! Please send your information to editor Kathryn Miles (kmiles@unity.edu) for inclusion in the next newsletter.

ASLE News 10 Fall 2008

ASLE News Notes

Online Bibliography Update

An updated, printable version of the ASLE Online Bibliography can be downloaded at http://www.biblioserver.com/asle.

ASLE in Your Own Backyard

Interested in hosting the ASLE biennial conference in 2011 or 2013? Want to propose an off-year symposium? ASLE wants to hear from you! Please consult the "Guidelines for Conference Proposals" on the ASLE website and submit your proposal. Applications should be sent to Rochelle Johnson (rjohnson@albertson.edu).

ASLE Emeritus

ASLE News honors those ASLE members retired or retiring from teaching. If you would like to acknowledge someone in this new featureor if you yourself will be retiring during the coming academic yearplease contact Kathryn Miles (kmiles@unity.edu). We will include a brief account of scholarly interests, the institutions of employment and years taught in the next newsletter.

ASLE Defended

ASLE News is pleased to include announcements commemorating those members who have recently completed their doctoral work. If you have recently defended a dissertation and would like to be included in this new feature, please contact Kathryn Miles (kmiles@unity.edu) with the dissertation title, degree-granting institution, and committee members.

ASLE-ANZ Tackles Sustainability

ASLE-ANZ (Australia-New Zealand) recently hosted a symposium 'Cultures of Sustainability,' which was held in collaboration with RMIT University's Art and Sustainability Research Cluster. The event took place on September 27^th and found itself in direct competition with one of Australia's main stream religions, the Australian Football League grand final. The Melbourne streets were lined with the Hawks and Geelong supporters who had pretty much booked out much of the accommodation in the city. It says much about the registrants and the quality of the symposium that more than 100 hard-core supporters of interdisciplinary environmental studies tackled issues to do with psychoterratic disorders, hyperseparation, and parasitic logic.

Keynote speaker Wendy Wheeler (ASLE-UK) spoke on biosemiotics and urged us to find the fish within us. Kumi Kato (University of Queensland) bypassed fish for whales in her paper on the respect for whaling during the last century, as shown by the coastal community of Nagato, in Japan. The presentation contrasted, and resonated, with Mark Wilson's 'nanoq: flat out and bluesome' project in which taxidermied polar bears were reclaimed from museums and situated in contexts that forced the recognition that, shoot fire, these bears once had a life. The installation (by Wilson and Bryndis Snaebjornsdóttir) formed part of the RMIT Gallery exhibition, 'Heat: Art and Climate Change' which was opened on the 11^th of September by Greens senator, Bob Brown. Invitations were printed on seeded paper (seed type unknown; awaiting germination). ASLE-ANZ president Kate Rigby presented 'Prospects for art in the face of ecocide'a title somewhat balanced by 'Restoration as culture', presented by NZ Vice-President, Charles Dawson. And that unstoppable force, Mark Tredinnick, V.P., has just won the inaugural Blake Poetry Prize. Mark read the night before at Collected Works Bookstore, along with poets and polymaths such as Pete Hay, Anne Elvey, Miriel Lenore, Susan Hawthorne and John Jenkins.

At the end of the conference, members trotted past jubilant Hawk supporters and put their money where their collective mouth was, polishing off with a meal at Hundred Mile Café, where the environment is saved "one dish at a time," by sourcing all fare from within a hundred mile radius. For presenters and paper synopses go to http://www.rmit.edu.au/art/culturesofsustainability.

CA Cranston, University of Tasmania

ASLE News 11 Fall 2008

Calls for Papers, Manuscripts, and Conferences

If you would like to announce a call for papers or a conference of interest in an upcoming issue of ASLE News, please contact Donelle Dreese, Project and Professional Liaison Coordinator, at dreesed1@nku.edu or 859-572-6148.

field of the environmental humanities might contribute to the study and teaching of American literature and culture. Please submit 200-word abstracts by email attachment by December 1, 2008 to: Rochelle Johnson at rjohnson@collegeofidaho.edu.

December 14, 2008. Humanities and Sustainability: Ecology in the Information Age. Fort Myers, Florida, May 8-9, 2009. Florida Gulf Coast University's Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education, and Departments of Language & Literature and Communication & Philosophy are currently accepting individual abstracts and panel proposals for FGCU's first Humanities and Sustainability conference. Our goal is to encourage interdisciplinary conversations about the role of the humanities in both "the ecological era" and "the information age." As such, we welcome submissions that explore (1) the ways humanities disciplines can address ecological issues, and (2) the sustainability of humanities disciplines themselves in the information age. Please submit 300-500 word paper and panel proposals, with A/V requests, by email to HandSCon@fgcu.edu. Include all text of the proposal in the body of the email (attachments will not be opened), and be sure to include full contact information for all panel members. See http://www.fgcu.edu/cas/HandScon/ for more information.

December 22, 2008. Literature, Art and Culture in an Age of Global Risk: An international, Interdisciplinary Conference. Cardiff University, UK, July 2-3, 2009. What are the cultural implications of living under conditions of global, manufactured risk? In the twentieth century, the possibility arose for the first time that a crisis of planetary proportions might result from human activities. By the early decades of the century, global economic and financial interdependence was such that a crisis unfolding in one location could radiate outwards to destabilize the entire socio-economic world-system. Through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the risk of pandemic upheaval has been heightened by an array of phenomena: the expansion and acceleration of media and telecommunications networks; the integration of financial markets and the instantaneous ramification of market fluctuations via programme trading; nuclear proliferation; international terrorism; rapid population growth; unsustainable consumption of natural resources; overload of electricity grids, leading to cascading power failures; pollution of the ecosphere and resulting climate change; computer viruses and *cyber-warfare*; genetic engineering; cloning; nanotechnology; artificial intelligence; bioweaponry; the emergence and rapid spread of new strains of infectious disease; and the development of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Please send 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers to the organizer, Dr Paul Crosthwaite, at

Calls for Papers

October 31, 2008. Proposed Panel for 2009 ASLE Conference. We are seeking presenters for a panel, "Theatre in an Age of Eco-crisis," to be proposed for the ASLE conference, June 3-6, 2009 at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia. This panel is being formed to address the ramifications of a central question: How are theatre artists, producers and scholars responding (or how might they respond) in our ecological era? Presentations related to the conference theme, "Island time: The Fate of Place in a Wired, Warming World" are invited, but a variety of approaches to issues concerning ecology and theatre are equally welcome. For more information or to send an abstract, please contact Sheila Rabillard (rabillar@uvic.ca) and Nelson Gray (ncgray@uvic.ca).

October 31, 2008. Recreate, Replace, Restore: Exploring the Intersections between Meanings and Environments. Ohio Northern University, 17-19 April 2009. The aim of this conference is to further the ongoing dialogue on religion, ethics, and the environment by exploring three interrelated concepts: to recreate, to replace, and to restore. The interdisciplinary dialogue hosted by the conference is meant to illuminate certain unique dimensions at the crossroads between finding value and reflecting on one's place in the world. Conference organizers seek papers in the humanities, social sciences and the ecological sciences. Individual papers should be approximately 20-minutes reading time. We strongly encourage submissions from diverse scientific, religious, and philosophical approaches. We also encourage poster proposals from scientists, scholars and practitioners who are interested in contributing scientifically-oriented posters in general ecology, conservation ecology and restoration ecology for an interdisciplinary audience. Paper proposals should be sent to the conference organizers Mark Dixon (m-dixon@onu.edu) or Forrest Clingerman (f-clingerman@onu.edu). Poster proposals should be send to conference organizer Jay Mager (j-mager@onu.edu). All proposals should include name, contact information, and 3-5 keywords, in addition to a 300-500 word abstract. Acceptance notifications will be sent out by 15 December.

December 1, 2008. Panel: American Literature and the Environmental Humanities: Charting Directions. This is an ASLE-sponsored panel to be held at the American Literature Association's 20th Annual Conference, May 21-24, 2009, Boston, Massachusetts. While many of us may say that we are working in the "environmental humanities," few scholars have offered either full definitions of this new area of study or full statements about how work in the environmental humanities enhances our studies of literature and culture. This panel will consider how the emerging

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benchmark event in the study and interpretation of human nonhuman animal interrelationships. It will bring together a broad range of academic disciplines and representatives from universities, non- government organisations and the community, industry and government around the world. Conference delegates will examine the interrelationships between human and nonhuman animals from a cultural, historical, geographical, environmental, moral, legal and political perspectives. The conference will also bring together a number of leading scientists, philosophers and social theorists, academics and community leaders, all committed to animal protection and welfare. To submit a proposal, go to http://www.mindinganimals.com/. For further information, contact Rod Bennison (rod.bennison@newcastle.edu.au)

Calls for Manuscripts

November 15, 2008. Thoreau's Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming. The public is invited to submit essays and photos for online global warming book. Penguin Classics has partnered with the Union of Concerned Scientists to carry the legacy of classic environmental writers Emerson and Thoreau into the 21st century. The literary publisher and science group are inviting aspiring writers and photographers to submit their personal stories and images about global warming for a new online book, Thoreau's Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming, to be published by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2009. To participate, contributors must write a 200- to 500-word first-person account of global warming that relates to their life or the world around them: a special place that they want to protect; people, animals or activities they love that are threatened by a warmer climate; or the steps they are taking to stem the tide of global warming. Or, they can send a photo related to these topics. The best submissions will be included in the online book and in a limited-edition hardcover version. Contributors can submit their essays or photographs at www.ucsusa.org/americanstories.

December 15, 2008. Earth's Body: An Ecopoetry Anthology. Coeditors Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street solicit submissions for an international anthology of ecopoetry. We are looking for a wide and varied array of submissions. Our working definition of "ecopoetry" is flexible; it includes not only what might be called nature poetry, and not only poetry that focuses on environmental issues, but also experimental poetrypoetry that explores language in its relations with the other-than-human. We welcome work by emerging as well as established poets. We welcome serious poems, playful poems, poems in open or traditional forms. Depending on limitations of space, we will consider poems of several pages. The anthology will include only poets who are/were alive as of July 2007, and will include only poems either written in English or already translated into English; for poems not written in English, both original and translation must be submitted, and if accepted, both will be published. We will consider work that has been previously published, but the poet

globalrisk@cardiff.ac.uk. Proposals for three-person panels are also welcome; please send a brief description of the panel along with abstracts for the individual papers. For more information, please visit the conference web site: http://www.cf.ac.uk/encap/globalrisk.

January 1, 2009. Earth Matters On Stage: Symposium on Ecology and Performance 2009. May 21-31, 2009, University of Oregon. Ecology is at the heart of burgeoning creativity and interdisciplinary scholarship across the arts and humanities. This Symposium, together with the concurrent Festival, invites artists, scholars and activists to share their work, ideas, and passions with one another and with the larger community who attend the Festival. We welcome creative and innovative proposals for workshops, round-tables, panels, working sessions, installations, or participatory community gatherings that explore, examine, challenge, articulate, or nourish the possibilities of theatrical and performative responses to the environmental crisis in particular, and our ecological situatedness in general. We encourage proposals that bring presenters and participants together as they engage the driving question of how theatre has or might function as part of our reciprocal relationship with ecological communities. Please send a one-page proposal to: Earth Matters Symposium 2009, Theresa May, Director, Theater Arts, VIL 216, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403. Please include: Type of session & title;Preferred type of space (classroom, theatre, studio, or outdoors); Time-length (60 min; 90 min; 2+ hours; half-day); Ideal or maximum number of participants; Short bios. We encourage proposals that include more than one presenter; however, single person proposals are accepted and will be combined with others as themes and formats allow. See http://www.uoregon.edu/~ecodrama/welcome/for information.

January 5, 2009. Greenscapes Sense and Meaning: Fields of Dreams (Landscapes of Myth and Imagination). October 1-3, 2009, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario. Our landscapes have long been the unconscious repository of cultural hopes, fears and desires. From the Garden of Eden to Aboriginal Dreamtime, societies have perceived their surrounding natural environment to express cultural values reflected in their myths, legends, sacred texts and belief systems. The occupation, transition, or representation of landscape constitutes an imaginative exercise for both subject and object. Yet imagination is not a consciously controllable process, and dreams can be unsettling portents as well as expressions of wish-fulfillment. We welcome papers that explore landscapes of myth and imagination in real and virtual sites, literary texts, images, and installations. Please send abstracts (up to 250 words) and a brief biography to greenscapes@brocku.ca.

January 30, 2009. Minding Animals: 2009 International Academic and Community Conference on Animals and Society. University of Newcastle, Australia, July 13-19, 2009. Call for abstracts and registration now open. The conference will be a

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your manuscript returned; authors will be notified of acceptance status by email within 2 months of the deadline. Anthology will be submitted to a university press for publication. There will be no compensation for manuscripts, though we are able to pay copyright fees for previously published work, within reason. Send submissions to: Susan Tomlinson, Honors College, Box 1017, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, 79409-1017.

March 1, 2009. Boundaries of Mountains, Rivers, and Culture: Essays from Northern California and Southern Oregon. The border territory of the western half of northern California and southern Oregon is a region with a distinct landscape, people, and culture. The physical landscape of this regionsite of the confluence of the Klamath, Siskiyou, Cascade, and Coastal mountain ranges and multiple watershedsdefies artificial state boundaries and directly influences the region's culture, including its local industry (ranching, farming, orchards, timber, outdoor recreation, and others), history, and politics (such as water use issues in the Klamath Basin). We invite submissions of creative nonfiction essays for an edited collection demonstrating your own engagement with some aspect of the region described above (although you do not need to be a resident ), whether it be the people, history, culture, natural landscape, geography, or (preferably) an exploration of the relationship between several. Submissions should be no more than 5,000 words, in 12-point font with 1-inch margins on all sides, include a title page with the author's name and contact information, and essay page should have the title in a footer or header next to page numbers. Electronic submissions are preferred, but hard copy manuscripts will be accepted (although not returned). Send submissions and questions to Steven Hall (orcaessays@gmail.com), Doctoral Candidate,English Department, Idaho State University, 732 W. Whitman Street, Pocatello, ID 83204.

No Deadline Given. Ecological Criticism: Applications and Possibilities. Edited by Murali Sivaramakrishnan and Ujjwal Jana. Ecologically sensitive criticism has been practiced and critiqued in isolation by academics and intellectuals in our part of the world for close to a decade now. However, few significant attempts have been made towards any collaborative venturetowards theory and practice. The present anthology proposes to be the first of its kind. We have in mind an anthology of critical pieces focusing on the various aspects of ecological and environmental criticism, its diverse reach and possibilities. We invite articles from academics and critics interested and involved in this unique and sensitive critical practice. The book is to be published by Sarup and Sons (Delhi). For further clarifications do not hesitate to contact any of us: Murali Sivaramakrishnan (smurali1234@yahoo.com) or Ujjwal Jana (ujjwal_jn@yahoo.co.in).

Ongoing. Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy, a peer-reviewed, open-source academic journal,invites submissions for its upcoming issues. Green Theory & Praxis represents a scholarly effort to present research papers and essays at the

(and/or translator) MUST control rights to the work. Please send up to six poems to both Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street. You may send them as email text or by US mail. If they come as email text, make sure the spacing and lineation travel accurately. Attachments will not be opened. Please also include a short bio and a cover letter, and an SASE for our reply. Ann Fisher-Wirth, English Department, Bondurant C-135, University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677, afwirth@olemiss.edu. Laura-Gray Street, English Department, Randolph College, 2500 Rivermont Avenue, Lynchburg, VA 24503, lstreet@randolphcollege.edu

December 15, 2008. Reading Places: Bioregional Literary Criticism, editors Tom Lynch, Cheryll Glotfelty, and Karla Armbruster. We invite proposals for a collection of original, previously unpublished essays in bioregional literary criticism. We prefer essays (4,500-6,000 words) that are theoretically rigorous but also written in an accessible and lively enough manner to be usable in graduate and undergraduate classrooms and accessible to the interested lay reader. We currently have a working relationship with the University of Georgia Press, and plan to seek a contract after we have vetted proposals. We estimate that essays will be due in October 2009. Send your proposal to all three of us: Tom Lynch (tlynch2@unl.edu), Cheryll Glotfelty (glotfelt@unr.edu), and Karla Armbruster (armbruka@webster.edu). The proposal should include essay title, abstract (250-500 words), and a brief biographical sketch. E-mail your proposal both as a Microsoft Word attachment and within the body of your e-mail. (If using Word 2007, please convert from .docx to .doc format.)

January 1, 2009. Whole Terrain. Writers and poets are invited to submit their work for Whole Terrain's 2009 volume, (R)(e)volution. We are looking for reflective essays (up to 2,000 words) that explore the roles revolution and evolution should play in solving current environmental crises. Questions for writers to consider include: How radical should solutions to environmental problems be? What can the evolution of species teach us about long-term societal change? Do lasting solutions come through evolution or only through revolution? Whole Terrain is also offering the New Terrain Award with a $500 prize for the best essay on the theme by a college undergraduate. To see Whole Terrain's official call for submissions and the contest rules, visit www.wholeterrain.org or e-mail editor Peter Davenport, whole_terrain@antiochne.edu.

January 30, 2009. Garden Anthology. We are seeking submissions on gardening and gardensas refuge, passion, obsession, food for the table, flowers for the desk for an anthology of garden literature. We are especially interested in literature with a strong sense of place. Submit fiction/non-fiction (limit 5000 words, or 3-5 poems). No email submissions will be accepted. Please indicate in your cover letter if and where a work was previously published. Include a SASE if you want

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multidisciplinary way to address the fundamentals of sustainability. As well as an impressive line-up of international speakers, the conference will also include paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by practitioners, teachers and researchers. If you are unable to attend in person, virtual registrations are also available, which allow you to submit a paper for possible publication, as well as virtual access to the conference proceedings. See www.SustainabilityConference.com

NEH Seminar

January 15, 2009. A Fierce Green Fire at 100: Aldo Leopold and the Roots of Environmental Ethics. Prescott, Arizona, June 22 ­ July 17, 2009. Summer Institute for College Faculty, sponsored by the ASU Institute for Humanities Research. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Up to 25 college faculty will be selected, and each will receive a $3,200 stipend to cover books, transportation, and lodging. Participants are expected to develop a college-level curriculum during the institute. Candidates must complete an IHR online application, available by October 2008, with an application deadline of January 15, 2009, and notification by February 15, 2009. The selection committee will take into account geographic and discipline diversity, as well as experience, hoping to attract both senior professors and emerging scholars. Community college teachers will be considered. Institute co-directors are Joan McGregor (joan.mcgregor@asu.edu), ASU Professor of Philosophy, and Dan Shilling (danshilling@cox.net), former director of the Arizona Humanities Council. The applicant organization is the Institute for Humanities Research at ASU (ihr@asu.edu · 480-965-3000).

Job Opportunities

October 23, 2008. Oberlin College Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies Program. Oberlin seeks full-time, tenure-track faculty at Assistant Professor or more senior level beginning August 2009. Information at http://www.oberlin.edu/HR/FACopenings/FAC09-03.html. Ideal candidate will address environmental issues in compelling and original ways from a humanities perspective. Requirements: Ph.D. or appropriate terminal degree. Submit letter of application, statement of research and teaching interests, curriculum vitae, academic transcripts, and three letters of recommendation to John Petersen, Director, Environmental Studies Program, 122 Elm Street, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074, by October 23, 2008. Fax 440-775-8946. Late applications may be considered until position is filled. AA/EOE

November 1, 2008. Director of Environmental Studies. Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC. Wofford College seeks applicants for the position of Director of Environmental Studies. The director will coordinate the work of participating faculty members and chair the ES oversight committee and will

transformative nexus of ecological politics and culture, social structures, sustainability education and ecocriticism. We invite transdisciplinary papers, and encourage scholars and activists from throughout the world to submit manuscripts for peer review. Visit http://greentheoryandpraxis.ecopedagogy.org/index.php/journal to submit your work online and receive more information.

Ongoing. Humanimalia:A Journal of Human/Animal Interface Studies (http://www.depauw.edu/humanimalia) is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal published by DePauw University. Humanimalia has three aims: to explore and advance the vast range of scholarship on human/animal relations, to encourage exchange among scholars working within a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and to promote dialogue between the academic community and those working closely with animals in non-academic fields.We publish articles of 5000-9000 words and seek both broad, theoretical submissions that have a conceptual focus and intervene in the field of animal studies, and also more focused works that situate their arguments within more specific fields, debates and examples. We also invite concise, thematically contained short essays that provide insight into current developments and debates surrounding any topic related to animal studies (1,500-2,500 words). Humanimalia also reviews items of interest in the fields of animal studies, including books, new journals, DVDs, and conferences. Reviews should involve a description of the item's content, an assessment of its likely audience, and an evaluation of its importance in a larger context (1,500­2,500 words). Review submissions undergo editorial review.

Conferences of Interest

October 30-November 2, 2008. 2008 Film & History Conference: Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond, Chicago, Illinois. AREA: Nature and the Environment in Feature Films. This area investigates the uses and representations of nature and the environment in feature films, rather than the more often discussed use of documentaries to reflect on the natural world. Thanks to Al Gore, and others, we expect and respect documentary films that address environmental issues, but feature films can also speak to environmental issues or provide nuanced representations of nature. Can feature films provide a forum for discussion on environmental issues? Is such a message always sensationalized with Hollywood stars and big budget special effects? Is this always an intersection of box office revenue and message, with box office the only hoped for winner? For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website: www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory.

January 5-7, 2009. Fifth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic, and Social Sustainability. University of Technology, Mauritius. This conference aims to develop a holistic view of sustainability, in which environmental, cultural and economic issues are inseparably interlinked. We seek a

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EO/AA employer. Please send a letter of interest, curriculum vitae, 3 letters of recommendation, evidence of teaching experience and effectiveness, and a sample of recent scholarship to Robert W. Turner, Environmental Studies Program Director, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346; electronic submissions to rturner@mail.colgate.edu are encouraged. Review of completed applications will commence on November 17, 2008.

Fellowships

November 1, 2008. Dumbarton Oaks Research Fellowships and Opportunities in Byzantine Studies, Garden and Landscape Studies, and Pre-Columbian Studies. Types of fellowships include: Residential Academic Year Fellowships, Residential Academic Year Junior Fellowships, Residential Summer Fellowships, Short-Term Pre-Doctoral Residencies, Project Grants, One-Month Post-Doctoral Stipends (This stipend carries deadlines of October 15 for projects carried out January - June, February 15 for projects carried out July - December). Please see http://www.doaks.org/research/ for full criteria and application materials.

January 15-March 1, 2009. Massachusetts Historical Society Fellowships. Types of fellowships available: NEH Long-Term Fellowships, New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Fellowships, Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society Short-Term Fellowships. For information and applications, please see our web site, www.masshist.org/fellowships, or contact Jane Becker, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215 (fellowships@masshist.org or 617-646-0518).

teach four courses per year. Ideal candidates will have experience in multidisciplinary work, published research, and demonstrated teaching effectiveness. A Ph.D. is required in an appropriate area of science such as biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, geology, forestry, or toxicology. Candidates must have a strong background in field-based work and commitment to utilizing our newly acquired green space and facilities, which are located five miles from our main, urban campus. This is a tenure track position starting in fall 2009. Salary and benefits are competitive and commensurate with experience. Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, statement of teaching philosophy including ideas for research with undergraduates, and two letters of recommendation to John Lane, Associate Professor of English and Interim Director of Environmental Studies at laneje@wofford.edu. Electronic submissions only. Deadline for application is November 1, 2008. For more information, please contact Professor Lane.

November 1, 2008. Assistant Professor in Environmental Literature and Creative Writing. The College of Idaho (Caldwell, ID) announces a tenure-track position in environmental literature and creative writing (non-fiction prose) at the Assistant Professor level to begin fall 2009. Primary teaching responsibilities include creative writing (non-fiction prose), environmental literature/humanities, and composition at all levels. Ability to teach the literature of the American West or Latino/Latina (or other minority) literature also desirable. Applicants must have a Ph.D., relevant teaching experience, and a record of professional activity. Teaching load is 3-1-3. The College of Idaho is a selective, small, private liberal arts institution noted for its rigorous academic standards and close student-faculty interaction. Send letter of application, c.v., statement of teaching philosophy, contact information for three references, and unofficial transcripts to hr@collegeofidaho.edu; or fax to 208-459-5362; or mail to Office of Human Resources, English/ES Search, The College of Idaho, 2112 Cleveland Blvd. Caldwell, ID 83605. EEO Electronic submissions encouraged. Application review will begin on November 1. www.collegeofidaho.edu.

November 17, 2008. Environmental Justice Tenure Track Position. The Environmental Studies Program at Colgate University invites applications for a tenure-stream (assistant or associate) position in environmental justice. A joint appointment with one of Colgate's departments or other interdisciplinary programs is likely. Colgate seeks an individual committed to scholarship and undergraduate teaching in environmental justice studies. The five-course teaching load will include environmental justice courses and other courses in Colgate's Environmental Studies Program, in the university's interdisciplinary core curriculum, and in a related department or in any of Colgate's interdisciplinary programs. Salary and benefits are highly competitive. Completion of Ph.D. prior to or shortly after the date of hire is expected. Colgate is an

ASLE News 16 Fall 2008

Summer Symposia Round Up

This past summer featured off-year symposia on topics ranging from 19^th-century science to 21^st-century technology. In the articles below, the three symposia organizers offer their own synopses on the balmy exchange of ideas and thoughts for future programs.

Rural Heritage Institute

More than 30 educators, scholars, artists, former students, and rural Vermont enthusiasts gathered for an ASLE-affiliated symposium, The Rural Heritage Institute (RHI), held June 11-15th at Sterling College in Vermont. Weaving together academics with local feasts and music festivals, books and poetry, and issues surrounding environmental sustainability, RHI dove into the work, traditions, and crafts of rural life in northern New England.

We wanted to shift from academics isolated inside the classroom to academics actively studying the local community. RHI was unlike most academic gatherings we worked hard to balance on-site seminars with field experiences on farms and in communities across Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Too often, scholars of cultural studies, New England history, or even agriculture are separated from the practitioners and the very work that is at the heart of their academic subject.

The four-day Institute included lectures by leading scholars and practitioners on topics such as: The Farmhouse, The Politics of Rural Life through Journalism, Poetry and Place, Sense of Place and Work in Nineteenth-Century Vermont, Oral History and Community Memory, Mapping Historical Landscapes, and more. Educators were introduced to the concept of weaving rural heritage into standard curriculums. Fiction and nonfiction writers gained fodder for future works, and individuals interested in rural crafts and traditions increased their appreciation and knowledge of the history of Northern Vermont. As an added bonus, graduate credits were available for participants made possible by Sterling in partnership with The Northeast Kingdom School Development Center at Lyndon State College.

The second annual Rural Heritage Institute is being planned for summer 2009.

Pavel Cenkl, Sterling College

Sharp Eyes V

The fifth biennial Sharp Eyes conference was held at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY on June 15-20, 2008. The conference, "John Burroughs, Nature Writing, and 19^th Century Science," kicked off Sunday night with an open house at the Warthin Museum of Geology and Natural History, featuring a special exhibition: "The Evolution of the Natural Sciences: Selections from the Natural History Museum at Vassar College Museum," presented by curators Lois Horst and Rick Jones. The academic portion of the conference opened Monday with a

keynote speech by Charlotte Zoe Walker (SUNY Oneonta) entitled "John Burroughs, Sharp Eyes and Reading the Book of Nature Today;" the program closed Thursday night with a keynote address by Harry Stoneback (SUNY New Paltz) entitled: "John BurroughsRegionalist (and Modernist?): A Meditation on Influences and Confluences." In between these presentations were 18 academic papers on Burroughs or other nature writers by a diverse array of scholars from across the country.

In addition to listening to academic presentations, the conference participants also had the opportunity to go on a nature walk led by John Tallmadge and a bird walk led by Vassar Associate Professor of Geography Mary Ann Cunningham. One full day was devoted to field trips to explore John Burroughs's haunts in West Park including a tour of the Riverby property co-led by Joan Burroughs and Steve and Darcy Grim. The tour ended on the beach where some participants swung on a tire swing, and at least one person swam in the Hudson River. The participants then walked the 1.5 miles up to Slabsides for lunch, an open house of the cabin, and hikes around the Sanctuary.

Evenings were devoted to social activities: Monday night was an slide show on Burroughs's life by Seldon Spencer, Tuesday was film night featuring two new DVDs on Burroughs: "John Burroughs: A Naturalist in the Industrial Age" by Lynn Spangler (SUNY New Paltz) and "Waiting" by Mark Doerrier (independent film maker). Wednesday was a dance with the Walker Family (a regular feature of the last three Sharp Eyes conferences), followed by an open mike.

The interchange at the conference was enlivened by the presence 21 students taking a for-credit, concurrent seminar (taught by Dan Payne, Steve Mercier, and John Tallmadge), and by members of the local community who came for one or more days.

This year, we moved the conference from its normal location at SUNY Oneonta so that participants might take advantage of the Vassar College Special Collections holdings of Burroughs papers (introduced Monday morning by Ron Patkus, Vassar College Special Collections librarian), as well as the Burroughs properties in West Park, NY just across the river from Poughkeepsie. The next Sharp Eyes conference will be back in Oneonta in June of 2010. Watch for announcements next summer.

Jeff Walker, Vassar College

See Symposia on page 18

ASLE News 17 Fall 2008

Symposia continued from page 17

ASLE Heads to MLA

The 124^th Modern Language Association Convention will be held in San Francisco, CA from 27-30 December. ASLE will be sponsoring two sessions at the convention:

Saturday, 27 December 3:30-4:45 p.m., Hilton San

Francisco: "Forgive Us Earth, for We Have Sinned"?
Environmentalism and Religion.
1. "Does This Place, This Earth, Really Matter?" Ken Hiltner, U. of California, Santa Barbara

2. "Apocalypse Now (and Then): The Roots of Environmental Rhetoric," Rory Wallace, Emily Carr Inst. of Art and Design

3. "Uniting for a Common Goal: The Interfaith Solution to Earth's Environmental Crisis," Jessica Galant, Stanford U.

4. "Emergent Ecologies: Ecocriticism and the Emergent Church," Shawn Grant, Florida State U.

Sunday, 28 December 7:15-8:30 p.m., Hilton San

Francisco: Theorizing Ecocriticism
1. "The Character of Theory: Ecocriticism as Ethics," Anthony Lioi, Juilliard School

2. "Material Engagements: Science, Science Studies, and Ecocriticism," Stacy Alaimo, U. of Texas, Arlington

3. "Ecoformalism: The Language of Nature, the Nature of Language," Scott Bousquet Knickerbocker, College of Idaho

4. "Theorizing Ecocriticism: Praxis and Ecophobia," Simon C. Estok, Sungkyunkwan U.

For more information on the panels or how you can get involved with ASLE at MLA, please contact MLA liaison Sarah McFarland (mcfarlands@nsula.edu).

The Keyboard in the Garden

Over the weekend of June 27-29, 2008, some three dozen scholars gathered at Delaware Valley College (which is actually in Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia) for an ASLE Off-Year Symposium. The conference was titled "The Keyboard in the Garden: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Literature and Mediated Nature," a theme linked both to the college's agricultural heritage and to its current environmental imperatives. Our keynote speaker was Annie Merrill Ingram of Davidson College, whoas expected wowed the audience Friday night, setting the stage for Saturday's full day of concurrent sessions. At the end of the day participants met for the usual conference banquet: a fine feast in the campus dining hall, followed by a set of spectacular performances by the Bucks County Folk Song Society. The conference wrapped up Sunday with a guided field trip to Bartram's Gardens in Philadelphia.

Although the conference followed the usual model for such events, we tried a few innovations that may be of interest to anyone considering a future symposium. Most participants stayed in the dorms, but the college doesn't provide linens for students during the school year, so there was no linen service for the conference. We had people bring their own bedding to the conference, and bought linens from discount stores at $25 for those who could not. We then located a homeless shelter that would take donations of lightly used sheets and blankets. Instead of the usual t-shirt or book bag, we (actually, Leslee Blahut, our remarkable department secretary) found a place that made up travel mugs with the conference logo on them; it was a fairly popular item. The last innovation was in the program. I'd collected both abstracts and bios from every presenter, so I assembled them along with the program itself and sent it out to a self-publishing house. It not only turned out well, it was actually cheaper than doing the copying ourselves!

Richard Hunt, Delaware Valley College

DANS Affiliation Formed

This summer ASLE became an affiliated organization of the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability (DANS). DANS is an informal network of professional associations committed to education for a sustainable future. They seek to help higher education exert strong leadership in making education, research, and practice for a sustainable society a reality. To find out more about DANS, visit their website: http://www.aashe.org/dans/. If you are interested in helping to coordinate future efforts between ASLE and DANS, please contact Donelle Dreese, dreesed1@nku.edu.

ASLE News 18 Fall 2008

ASLE Bookshelf

The following works were recently published by ASLE members. If we've missed your publication, please send bibliographic information to Kathryn Miles at kmiles@unity.edu.

With your support, ASLE publishes a biannual journal (ISLE) and a newsletter, maintains a dynamic website, sponsors regular symposia, and hosts a conference every other year.

Much of this work is accomplished through your membership contributions and the members who volunteer their time to serve the organization.

Your contributions support ASLE's operating costs If you consider the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment to be one of your primary intellectual and creative homes, please consider joining your friends and colleagues listed here by giving at the Sustaining ($100+) or Patron ($150+) level.

Bogard, Paul (Editor). Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2008.

Browne, Neil. The World in Which We Occur: John Dewey, Pragmatist Ecology, and American Ecological Writing in the Twentieth Century. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2007.

Cauthen, Sudye. Southern Comforts: Rooted in a Florida Place. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2007.

Christensen, Laird, Mark Long and Frederick Waage, eds. Teaching North American Environmental Literature. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2008.

Christensen, Laird and Hal Crimmel. Teaching About Place: Learning from the Land. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2008.

Cook, Barbara (Editor). Women Writing Nature: A Feminist View. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2008

Crimmel, Hal. Dinosaur: Four Seasons on the Green and Yampa Rivers. Photographs by Steve Gaffney. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2007.

Dodd, Elizabeth. In the Mind's Eye: Essays Across the Animate World. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.

Kheel, Marti. Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2008.

Milne, Anne. Lactilla Tends Her Fav'rite Cow: Ecocritical Readings of Animals and Women in Eighteenth-Century British Labouring-Class Poetry. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2008.

Roberts, Suzanne. Nothing to You: San Antonio: Pecan Grove Press, 2008

. Shameless, Cincinnati: Cherry Grove Collections, 2007

Taylor, David A. Success: Stories. Washington, DC: Washington Writers' Publishing House,2008.

Waldman, Ken. Are You Famous?: Touring America with Alaska's Fiddling Poet. San Bruno, CA: Catalyst Book Press, 2008.

Patron Members

Tom Bailey

Annie & Randy Ingram

Rochelle Johnson

Eric Katz

John Lane & Betsy Teter

Mark C. Long

Cate Mortimer-Sandilands

Priscilla Paton

Jeri Pollock

Jim Warren &

Julianne Lutz Warren

Richard Wiebe

Sustaining Members

Anonymous

Di Brandt

Neil Browne

Katherine R. Chandler

Laird Christensen

J. Gerard Dollar

Ann Fisher-Wirth

Cheryll Glotfelty

Ursula K. Heise

Richard Hunt

Christoph Irmscher

Walter Isle

John Knott

Ian Marshall

Steven Marx

Allen K. Mears

Milkweed Editions

Rebecca O'Connor

Deidre Pike

Lynn Poland

Randall Roorda

John Sitter

Lya Sorano

Barton L. St. Armand

William Stott, III

Bill Stowe

William Stroup

Alison Swan

H. Lewis Ulman

Allison B. Wallace

Kathleen R. Wallace

Lisa West

Louise Westling

Penny Wilkes

ASLE News 19 Fall 2008

ASLE News the biannual newsletter of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environmentreports ASLE business and publishes information of interest to its membership. Have any news or ideas? Contact newsletter editor Kathryn Miles at kmiles@unity.edu.

ASLE News

P.O. Box 502

Keene, NH 03431-0502

Phone & Fax: 603-357-7411

info@asle.org

www.asle.org

Project Coordinators

Awards Coordinator

Tom Lynch

University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Bibliography Editor/Coordinator
H. Lewis Ulman

The Ohio State University
Book Review Editor, ISLE
Michael Branch

University of Nevada, Reno
Diversity Caucus Coordinators
Levita Mondie-Sapp

The Maret School
Priscilla Solis Ybarra
Rice University

Graduate Mentoring Program
Coordinator

Mark Long
Keene State College
Graduate Student Liaisons
Paul Bogard

University of Nevada, Reno
Angela Waldie
University of Calgary

Professional Liaison Coordinator
Donelle Dreese

Northern Kentucky University

International Organizations

ALECC l ASLE-ANZ l ASLE-India ASLE-Japan l ASLE-Korea l ASLE-Taiwan l ASLE-UK l EASLCE l OSLE-India

Affiliated Professional

Organizations

American Literature Association
American Studies Association,

Environmental Studies Caucus

Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC)
Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability (DANS)

International Association for

Environmental Philosophy (IAEP)

Modern Language Association (MLA)
Midwest MLA (M/MLA)

Northeast MLA (NEMLA)

Pacific MLA (PAMLA)

Rocky Mountain MLA (RMMLA)

Society for Early Americanists

Society for Literature, Science and the Arts

Society for the Study of American Women Writers

Managing Director: Amy McIntyre

ASLE Officers

President

Rochelle Johnson

The College of Idaho
Vice President
Dan Philippon

University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Immediate Past President
Karla Armbruster

Webster University
Executive Secretary
Kathleen Wallace

The Ohio State University
ISLE Editor
Scott Slovic

University of Nevada, Reno
ASLE News Editor
Kathryn Miles

Unity College

Executive Council

(date indicates year term expires)

Janine DeBaise

SUNY College of Environmental

Science & Forestry, 2009
Tom Hillard
Boise State University, 2010

Richard Kerridge
Bath Spa University, 2008

Gretchen Legler
University of Maine Farmington, 2010

Sheryl St. Germain
Chatham College, 2008

Jim Warren
Washington and Lee University, 2009

ASLE News accepts advertisements of interest to our members at rates of $200 for a full page, $150 for a 1/2 page, $100 for a 1/4 page and $75 for an 1/8 page. Contact Kathryn Miles, kmiles@unity.edu, with inquiries.

ASLE News 20 Fall 2008